In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays

We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions

I imitated the form of the astrological charts and arranged my friends and their cities in constellations. I very much liked the idea of relationships being visualized as horoscopes and charts

One continually leaps over the negative. I haven’t yet reached a point where I’m courageous every day. And the struggle keeps my diary alive. Now I have a sense of harmony, of integration. I feel free. The two women are there in me, but they don’t tear at each other. They live in peace

We speak of the masculine and the feminine, but they are the wrong labels. It is really more a matter of poetry versus intellectualization

Women don’t like being romanticized or idealized any more than they like being insulted or humiliated

Men must have invented the taboo

Men invented soul, philosophy, religion. Women have perceptions that are difficult to describe, at least in intellectual terms

I talk about funawn, a Welsh word that means the kind of talk that leads to intimacy

It’s a very strange illness, and it doesn’t strike men—because the culture has demanded of man that he give his maximum talents. He is encouraged by the culture, to become the great doctor, the great philosopher, the great professor, the great writer. Everything is really planned to push him in that direction. Now, this was not asked of women. And in my family, just as in your family probably, I was expected simply to marry, to be a wife, and to raise children. But not all women are gifted for that, and sometimes, as D. H. Lawrence properly said, “We don’t need more children in the world, we need hope.”

guilt for creating