Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.

She'd like to be indispensable; that's what every woman wants...

This is what women want: to be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved.

"What do women want?" As though it's really mysterious. As though it's a big deal. All that women want is what anybody wants. You know, friendship and companionship and respect and a certain amount of leadership with submission and a kind of cooperation at all times and pre-emptive empathy and you know, general telepathy. It's no big deal, is it? [...] Traditionally, women have been attracted to uniforms. So it's not difficult to know what women want. Fascists - that's really what they're all after!

The desire to be perfect. Women innately have this weird thing where they try to have a perfect persona—to look perfect, be perfect, act perfect, have their kids look a certain way. Women put so much pressure on themselves.

One of the deepest feminine desires in intimacy (though not in business or simple friendship) is to be able to relax and surrender, knowing that her man is taking care of everything. Then, she can simply enjoy without having to plan it all herself and tell her man what to do.

Do women feel anything more keenly than curiosity? No, they will go to any lengths to find out, to know,to feel, what they have always dreamed of! Once their excited curiosity has been aroused, women will stoop to anything, commit any folly, take any risks. They stop at nothing. I am speaking of women who are real women, who operate on three different levels. Superficially cool and rational, they have three secret compartments: the first is constantly full of womanly fret and anxiety; the second is a sort of innocent guile, like the fearsome sophistry of the self-righteous; and the last is filled with an engaging dishonesty, a charming deviousness, a consummate duplicity, with all those perverse qualities in fact that can drive a foolish, unwary love to suicide, but which by others may be judged quite delightful.

For woman's chief want is to feel that she is wanted. Therefore it is that </br> With women, cruelty is more easily borne than coldness. Indeed, </br> It is astonishing how much downright cruelty a woman will stand from the man she loves or has loved.

women are traditionally trained to place others' needs first, to feel these needs as their own (the "infinite capacity"); their sphere, their satisfaction to be in making it possible for others to use their abilities.

And then there are the cravings.. Oh, la! A woman may crave to be near water, or be belly down, her face in the earth, smelling the wild smell. She might have to drive into the wind. She may have to plant something, pull things out of the ground or put them into the ground. She may have to knead and bake, rapt in dough up to her elbows.
She may have to trek into the hills, leaping from rock to rock trying out her voice against the mountain. She may need hours of starry nights where the stars are like face powder spilt on a black marble floor. She may feel she will die if she doesn’t dance naked in a thunderstorm, sit in perfect silence, return home ink-stained, paint-stained, tear-stained, moon-stained.

Most women have only to lay eyes on you to want to be doing something for you so badly they can’t stand it […] You’re always so timid and yet you’re funny […] Sometimes you get terribly lonesome and depressed, but that only makes a woman’s heart itch all the more for you.

She wanted what most women want, but she wanted it much more fiercely and passionately.

How can I call security a woman's primary fantasy if I am saying it is also her primary need? Because while her primary need is the security of a home and a family circle, her primary fantasy is that someone else will earn enough to pay for them. Hence the focus of 2 billion women on the latest royal wedding.

Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered.