檳榔嶼

- Women who choose to love must be wise, daring and courageous.
  - Wisdom is needed if we would restore love to its rightful place as a heroic journey, arduous, difficult - more vital to human survival and development on planet Earth than going off to slay mythical dragons, to ravage and conquer others with war or all other forms of violence that are like war.
  - Wisdom is needed if we are to demand that our culture acknowledge the journey to love as a grand, magical, life-transforming, thrilling, risky adventure.
- In our real lives, women who behave like emotionally underdeveloped girls (even if they are pretending) are often abandoned as they age by men who need the presence of a young and/or girlish female to feel powerful, potent, in control.
- Phyllis Chesler, <<Letters to a Young Feminist>> : "Our first and greatest search should have been for ourselves, not for a prince (or princess), no matter how charming."
- Women gain their power at the expense of male subordination is not a reflection of feminist success. It is a mark of the failure of feminist thinking to change the dominant patriarchal notion that in every relationship there is a dominant and a submissive party.
- In the aftermath of feminist change, it has become most evident that few couples are willing to do the work of love that would make mutual joy possible in partnerships. Since so many young women and men, as well as their elders, do not know how to love, it is easier strike a bargain using the old norms of top and bottom, of dominant and submissive.
- Mutuality, like love itself, must come through work. Wise women know that the happiest, most fulfilling committed partnerships (legalized via marriage or not) are those in which mutuality is the core value, in which the spiritual growth and development of each individual matters.
  - Wise women who love know we have to leave time for love. Most folks will say that their loved ones matter most to them, but when you look at what they actually do with their time, it becomes evident that what they claim to love the most receives the least attention.
  - Women and men, girls and boys, must restructure how we spend our time if we want to be loving. We cannot be overachievers and perfectionist performers from kindergarten on in our public lives (the world of school and work) if we are to learn how to love, if we want to practice the art of loving.
  - Genuine love requires time and commitment. Self-love takes times and commitment, particularly on the part of those who are wounded in the space where we would know love in our childhoods.
- My hope for younger generations of women is that they will examine the unfulfilled spaces of their lives soon and boldly, unabashedly choosing to do the work of love, placing it above everything. Again and again it must be stated when I talk about doing the work of love, I am not talking simply about partnership; I am talking about the work of self-love in conjunction with the work of relational love.
  - When we place emphasis on building a beloved community, of which having a partner may be an essential part but not the whole, we free ourselves to lead joyous lives as single folks, and sometimes if not always as celibate folks.
  - Celibacy is often a liberating self-loving choice among women for whom the search for sexual pleasure has consistently led them down a self-sabotaging path.
  - Joyless sexuality is not life-affirming. Within patriarchal intimacy, many women have sex against their will and desire. Many men would be shocked to find that their female partners are pretending sexual interest and feigning pleasure they do not feel and never feel.
- Women believed that it was important to prove our equality with men in the world of casual and meaningless sexual hedonism. Few of us feel that our lives or our sexualities were in any way enhanced by these exploits.
- The best sex and the most satisfying sex are not the same. I have had great sex with men who were intimate terrorists, men who seduce and attract by giving you just what you feel your heart needs then gradually or abruptly withholding it once they have gained your trust. And I have been deeply sexually fulfilled in bonds with loving partners who have had less skill and know-how... 
  - Fred Newman, <<Let's Develop: A Self-Help Guide to Continuous Personal Growth: "the best kind of sex, the sex in which there's the least amount of pretense - the most gratifying and satisfying sex - is sex you do with the person in your life whom you are most open."
- The most fulfilling, satisfying sex happens with the context of mutuality of consensual longing and desire. Way to many young women are still having sex they do not want in casual and committed partnerships for fear of displeasing the men in their lives.
- Let's face the fact that it helps to eroticize domination if you feel you can't change it. Women and men do not know what to do, what roles to play. Sexual sadomasochism broadens the playing field, gives everyone access to more roles, without creating concrete changes in the ways power and affection are distributed in relationships, in our public and private lives.
- We do know that women of all ages must continue our quest for sexual agency, that this is part of our assertion of healthy self-love. Knowing how to give love, we also recognize the love we want to receive When females of all ages love our bodies and our beings, we are able to set appropriate boundaries, to make choices in which our well-being is enhanced as is the well-being of those with whom we choose to share sexual pleasure.
- Self-actualization is no easy task. And it may well be that there remains a body of women who find it easier to target men, to blame them for all that remains unfulfilled in their lives, than do the work of love.
  - No one can bestow happiness or lasting joy upon us if we have not found the way to joy within ourselves. Self-knowledge is the way to find out what the secret of joy is in our individual lives.
- Every women should have, in her circle of love, companions of her soul. Soul nourishment sustains us when all the trappings of power, success, and material well-being lose meaning.
- True love is generous and ever replenishing. Wise women who love are not afraid to open our hearts to younger women so that they can speak to and with us about their deepest fears, needs, longings, and aspirations.