“The unwaged condition of housework has been the most powerful weapon in reinforcing the common assumption that housework is not work, thus preventing women from struggling against it, except in the privatized kitchen-bedroom quarrel that all society agrees to ridicule, thereby further reducing the protagonist of a struggle. We are seen as nagging bitches not workers in struggle.”

-- Silvia Federici

“At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.”

-- Rose Macaulay

“Now, as always, the most automated appliance in a household is the mother.”

-- Beverly Jones

“No longer will we [women] agree to protect the hearth at the price of extinguishing the fire within ourselves.”

-- Celia Gilbert

“I buried a lot of my ironing in the back yard.”

-- Phyllis Diller