She learned that women were braver than men. Braver and stronger. She learned that she herself could one day stretch open as wide as a window, and it would not kill her.

The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and torturous. ANNA QUINDLEN

The moral of this story is simple. Some moms are equipped by the hand of God to be "that mom." They have been formed with the three-C gene — Cooking, Crafting, and Cleaning come easily and naturally to them. Others of us have been delightfully chosen to provide the comic relief necessary to keep this world entertained. And to keep future therapists in business.

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven't exactly been non-aggressive - including me.

It's not the men in my life that count, it's the life in my men.

So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

His gray suit makes him seem extra vulnerable, in the way of children placed in unaccustomed clothes for ceremonies they don't understand.

Not until midlife did she truly believe that she had a right to exist, that the forces of nature had created her not as an afterthought and companion - a bent rib, as the infamous Malleus Maleficarum had it - but as the mainstay of the continuing Creation, as the daughter of a daughter and a woman whose daughters in turn would bear daughters.

A fashion that does not reach the streets is not a fashion

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

When a woman rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic and her sense of possibility contagious.

Your clothes should be tight enough to show you're a woman but loose enough to show you're a lady