“Men dream of women. Women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. Women constantly meet glances which act like mirrors reminding them of how they look or how they should look. Behind every glance is a judgment. Sometimes the glance they meet is their own, reflected back from a real mirror […] She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others and in particular how she appears to men is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.”

“She decides God is no good, but he must exist, / he must exist so she can hold him accountable.”

“Although we live in close contact with neighbors, masses of people in our society feel alienated, cut off, alone. Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair. Yet they are the outcome of life in a culture where things matter more than people. Materialism creates a world of narcissism in which the focus of life is solely on acquisition and consumption. A culture of narcissism is not a place where love can flourish.”