... to be afraid is in a way to be hopeful, because to be afraid means that you haven't given up. You know it doesn't help, but you keep thrashing. T…

- Betty Rollin

The notion that the maternal wish and the activity of mothering are instinctive or biologically predestined is baloney.

- Betty Rollin

unlike a disappointing marriage, disappointing motherhood cannot be terminated by divorce.

- Betty Rollin

Scratch most feminists and underneath there is a woman who longs to be a sex object. The difference is that is not all she wants to be.

- Betty Rollin

[On her mastectomy:] Fact is, I'm the same car I always was, except now I have a dent in my fender.

- Betty Rollin

Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment…

- Betty Rollin

[On her mastectomy:] Pity is delicious. I was crazy about the pity I got. It was the best kind, too. I did not get, nor did I want, the drooling, mew…

- Betty Rollin

in my mother's ferocious striving to give me 'everything,' she had never considered that giving me 'everything' would make me (1) different (from her…

- Betty Rollin

Disease may score a direct hit on only one member of a family, but shrapnel tears the flesh of the others.

- Betty Rollin