"(Streetwalker to friend) First he wants me to put on bunny ears and patent leather shoes, then he wants me to eat a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. I go, "Mister, you are so sick. I don't do nitrites."

"(Television) Women hold up half the sky. (Sylvia) Uh huh, but in a poor neighborhood."

"(Man on television) If women want time off to bear children, they can't expect to be treated as equals. (Sylvia) Okay, give men time off to bear children."

"(Man in suit to Indian woman) Oh guru, ancient mother of the world, we men have been crippled. We have never learned how to feel; we don't even know how to cry. Oh my wise guru, can you teach me to cry? (Guru) Sure. No problem. Tomorrow I'll start you at a dead-end job, pay you at women's wages and then I'll throw in sole support of a pre-school child."

"(Woman in office) Help, I am a rich woman being kept prisoner in a working woman's body. (p. 196)"

"(Sylvia at typewriter) "Superwoman." The definition is 1. A woman who has supernatural powers and uses them to fight evil. 2. A woman who has supernatural powers and uses them to combine a family and a career. (p. 184)"

"(Man on television) Rita, you must believe me, alien beings are among us. (Sylvia) Yeah, in public office."

"(Woman on television) Frank, Frank, make me feel like a woman. (Man on television) Could you pick up my laundry?"

"(Sylvia) Being a monopoly means never having to say you're sorry."

"(Man on television) Man is the hunter. Woman is the civilizing influence, and when women abandon that role, men become (Sylvia) Cranky, and start wars."

"(Television) Being a woman is as much a state of mind as a state of being. (Sylvia) Right. You stop paying attention, you might turn into a tuna."

"(Television) Our station is experiencing technical difficulties, so please try and amuse yourselves in whatever way you did before you became so emotionally dependent on us."

"(Man on television) The investment firm of Smith Barney: they make money the old-fashioned way--they earn it. (Sylvia) Right. The rest of us pick it off trees in the backyard."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) In the heat of the moment, I said a lot of unforgiveable things. Please call me. I've thought of a few more."

"(Man in bar) I like an older woman. (Sylvia) I'll pass that along."

"(Young girl rejecting Devil's attempt to purchase her soul) Bag your face. . . . You set off the smoke detector, ham breath. **(p. 142)"

"(Sylvia driving to nervous passenger Venusian Gernif) Don't be silly. You're not going to be the first interplanetary traveler to die in a Chevy."

"(Devil describes Hell) It's like you go to a Van Halen concert and you're the oldest one there, and there's a mix-up in the tickets, and you have to stand for the whole thing and it's hot and the kid next to you loses his lunch on your shoe. . . . I know. You thought it was going to be witty and Noel Cowardish."

"(Woman sitting by swimming pool) To me the most important quality in a kitchen is that it be in someone else's house, or in a restaurant."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) A lady never offers a new lover a complimentary tooth brush, razor and sewing kit the next morning."

"(Cartoon title) Don't throw that old diaphragm away! (Sylvia at typewriter) Because it can be used as: 1. Doorknob cover (no need to worry about fingerprints ever again) 2. Bathtub stopper 3) Rainhat for cat 4. Small frisbee."

"(Cartoon title) A cat being cured of hairballs through a television ministry. (Voice on television) Place your right paw on the screen."

"(Sylvia to character in book she is reading, Death by) Get out of that tub! Get in your car and get out of there! (Character) Suddenly I felt compelled to get out of that tub and out of that motel. I dressed and hopped in my car. Later I stopped for gas, and met a great guy. We got married and raise cocker spaniels."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) For feminine protection, every day use a hand grenade."

"(Doctor in bed) I dreamt I died and went to Heaven and they handed me some old Ms. magazines, a paper sheet, and made me sit in a little room with a bunch of other doctors."

"(Sylvia to her daughter) Rita, your body may be a temple. Mine is a Chevy Vega."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) The best place to discuss your sexual dissatisfaction with your partner is 1) in the bedroom 2) in a car, traveling at high speed 3) in a crowded elevator."

"(Voice on television) Mom, can a douche make you feel more confident? (Sylvia) Not like a good stock portfolio."

"(Man at dinner table) Bet you don't know what a male swan is called. (Woman at dinner table) Sure I do. A swine."

"(Woman psychic to woman client) So how come the tall, dark, handsome stranger I see in your future is a woman?"

"(Sylvia at typewriter) Common misunderstandings of young married couples. (Young husband to tearful wife) Jeannie, when I said that your dinner tasted like airplane food, that was meant as a compliment."

"(Woman to psychic) Which do you think is the more impossible dream: the perfect man or the perfect handbag?"

"(Voice on television) Honey, I love you, but I got to be moving on. (Sylvia) Break his kneecaps."

"(Voice on television) Midol relives the special pain that women get (Sylvia) when they realize they picked the wrong man, again."

"(Sylvia to blindfolded cat) Just put your paw on the map, and that's where we'll go for our vacation. It's a big country, and yet you picked Cleveland."

"(Dr. Paul Johns, animal linguist, on cats) It seems their entire language consists of two phrases, uttered with varying degrees of intensity: "Hurry that dinner, willya" and "Everything here is mine." (p. 35)"

"(Sylvia at typewriter) On Getting Old in America. By Sylvia. Page One. 1. Best to do it somewhere else."

"(Sylvia) You almost never see a real lady popping out of a cake."

"(Woman psychic) In June of 1987, men will begin talking about their feelings; women all over America will be sorry within minutes."

"There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humour. It is naked noise and naked malice."

"For Peake, the weight of moral standards comes from their being part of a tradition, and any tradition lies outside the individual’s potential and needs. Thus adherence to a morality impedes development of the whole self and denies real maturity."

"The host of specifically religious suggestions and images, in a story that until now has been devoid of such concern, suggests very strongly that Peake is here referring to the Christian religion as a debasing influence. Peake’s treatment of Gormenghast’s ritual shows that he dislikes any system of values imposed on the individual from outside, offering him nothing directly relevant for himself and encouraging him in whatever weakness he possesses. So, here, the Lamb can break down but not build; despite his worshipper’s praise, he does not really understand how to keep his creatures alive. Still the Lamb glories in his power. True, in changing men he has destroyed them, denying them freedom to develop for themselves; to the Lamb, however, that is incidental to his own gratification."

"There was a library and it is ashes. Let its long length assemble." These words made me a writer. When I was in middle school, my mother brought home a used paperback copy of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast…Reading this at the age of 13, I understood that fantasy, the place I was looking for, is not to be found in dragons, ghosts, or magic wands. It resides in language. Fantasy is death by owls. It’s mourning through gesture. It’s music, incantation in half-light. An inverted heart."

"[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."

"The paper is breathless Under the hand And the pencil is poised Like a warlock's wand."

"Change and growth cannot be halted, time must run on. That is the whole moral of the three books."

"You are the first person who has been able to illustrate the book adequately since Tenniel, though I still argue as I think I argued with you years ago that your Alice is a little bit too much of a gamin."

"Words were shapes and sounds to him. He saw them, as if he were listening to an unknown language, in shapes."

"Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It (Gormenghast trilogy) is a very, very great work … a classic of our age."

"Once there were islands all a-sprout with palms: and coral reefs and sands as white as milk. What is there now but a vast shambles of the heart? Filth, squalor, and a world of little men."