Florence King

“He travels fastest who travels alone, and that goes double for she. Real feminism is spinsterhood.”

“Whenever people are confronted by a prediction for the future that they simply cannot or will not believe, they always say, 'It will never happen in my lifetime.' If the prediction is something they deplore and fear, they say it with calculated bravado, often adding a smug, snorty hhrrummph.”

“I've done pretty well as a professional fed-up. The tools of my trade so far have been irony, tongue-in-cheek mockery, and supercilious contempt, but these are highly civilized weapons designed for 18th-century French salons.”

“Let's face it: 'Threatening' people are the only interesting people around. The unthreatening are, by and large, competent mediocrities who take lemming-like aim at careers in television.”

“If any of us had heard the word "feminist" we would have thought it meant a girl who wore too much makeup, but we were, without knowing it, feminists ourselves, bound together by the freemasonry that exists among intelligent women who know they are intelligent. It is the only kind of female bonding that works, which is why most men do not like intelligent women. They don't mind one female brain if they can enjoy it privately; it's the idea of two or more on the loose that upsets them. The girls in the college-bound group might not have been friends in every case--Sharon Cohen and I gave each other willies--but our instincts told us that we had the same enemies.”

“I don't suffer fools, and I like to see fools suffer.”

“Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.”

“I believe in a Republic of Merit in which water is allowed to find its own level, where voters, like drivers, are tested before being turned loose.”

“They don't call him 'No Drama Obama' for nothing. He's even worse than we thought because he has committed the ultimate American crime, worse than anything he has been accused of so far: He has no sense of humor.”

“Feminists, I hasten to add, are not all bad. In fact, they are an ideal bellwether, an invaluable aid in helping me form opinions on issues that I don't have time to keep up with. If the feminists are for it, I'm against it; if the feminists are against it, I'm for it.”

“Any woman who has ever worked in a gutsy male environment knows that the correct response to a randy remark is an even more salacious retort. But timid feminists don't see it that way. To them, the proper reply is a lawsuit - that safe, modern version of the old slap in the face.”

“No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street”

“Some last words seem flat-out unbelievable.”

“A man should never apologize!”

“Christopher Hitchens and I were not friends or even acquaintances. We never met or spoke on the phone, just exchanged occasional brief letters - notes, really - hand-written and snail-mailed at first, e-mailed later.”

“Showing up at school already able to read is like showing up at the undertaker's already embalmed: people start worrying about being put out of their jobs.”

“True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories.”

“We are incapable of leaving anything to the imagination and loath to leave anything out. Maniacal thoroughness has become our national verbal ideal.”

“The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.”

“You can't pretend to be witty because wit is dry, subtle, lacerating, cynical, elitist, and risque - all impossible to fake. Humor, on the other hand, is broad, soothing, positive, inclusive, and smutty - to make sure everybody gets it. Pretending to be humorous is easy, and a great many people are doing it.”