Quotes from Florence King

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.

In 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,' I couldn't take my eyes off Judith Anderson as Big Mama.

If the West Point class of 1915 is called 'the class the stars fell on' for the number of World War II generals it produced, my junior-high class of 1950 is the class a ton of bricks fell on from Hollywood's gut-wrenching portrayals of mother-love in '40s-era movies.

The long march of Western civilization from pantheons of gods for every taste to one God for all has been thrown into reverse by celebrity worship to give us a plethora of ancient deities to follow.

Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.

Owning your own home is America's unique recipe for avoiding revolution and promoting pseudo-equality at the same time.

There's no national glue holding us together because somebody put too much pluribus in the unum.

True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories.

I'd rather rot on my own floor than be found by a bunch of bingo players in a nursing home.

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

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

American couples have gone to such lengths to avoid the interference of in-laws that they have to pay marriage counselors to interfere between them.

People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be, that they're all asleep at the switch. Consequently we are living in the Age of Human Error.

Now the only thing I miss about sex is the cigarette afterward. Next to the first one in the morning, it's the best one of all. It tasted so good that even if I had been frigid I would have pretended otherwise just to be able to smoke it.

The Southern man has a certain swagger about him that every woman craves in a man, whether she is willing to admit it or not. in this depressingly utilitarian age, when young lovers remove identical faded jeans and pea jackets before getting into bed together, the thought of a beau sabreur lover is not unappealing, Neither the overbearing male chauvinist nor the supportive gelding are capalbe of stirring the female blood, but a dashing cavalier is.

The more immoral we become in big ways, the more puritanical we become in little ways.

I saw how dating chipped away tiny pieces of a woman's self-confidence; piece by piece, date by date, she was diminished by some form of unnatural behavior forced on her by social usage.

John Edwards] is the man that Rielle Hunter called 'real and authentic,' which tells us all we need to know about her mental abilities. This is why she can't figure out why he picked her. He could have had a multitude of sweet young things but he chose a 42-year-old who is one bleach job away from turning into one big split end, because his tumescent ego demands that he be the pretty one.

I was miserable. I wasn't used to children and they were getting on my nerves. Worse, it appeared that I was a child too. I hadn't known that before. I thought I was just short.

His Grace called Virginius in and said: "Do you think a priest of the Anglican Communion should be a divorced man with two wives living?" That's the way he talks. And do you know what Virginius said? He said: "Your Grace, if it weren't for divorce, there wouldn't be an Anglican Communion.

The really unfailing sign of a belle is that she exhausts people. In the old days, a girl could faint, which meant that some man had to pick her up and carry her while two or three others ran hither and yon fetching smelling salrs, water, or a litter on which to cart her away. This simply doesn't happen any more. Passing out from too much straight bourbon is just not as bellelike as fainting from unknown causes, nor is it as fastidious.

How is it?" Not like Father used to make. 'Perfect.' Soon, very soon, my lie became the truth. Martinis are like that, especially when shared with someone whose name you have whispered to yourself just for the magic of its sound.

Ever since high school I had been one of the special girls because of my grades; A's were the source of my power, but A's came from school and school would soon end. When it did, I would go from 'God, she's a brain,' to 'Hey, she's a secretary,' except I did not know shorthand.

For all I had heard about ancestors, I had no wish to be one. The idea of having children so they could have children so they could have children frightened me. It seemed so pointless, like that blissful measure of time in Heaven that so comforted the devout: 'If a bird transferred every grain of sand on every beach, grain by grain, and dropped them in the ocean, that is the beginning of eternity.