" women have always moaned about men,” Birbal said, “but it turns out that their deepest complaints are reserved for one another, because while they expect men to be fickle, treacherous, and weak, they judge their own sex by higher standards, they expect more from their own sex—loyalty, understanding, trustworthiness, love—and apparently they have all collectively decided that those expectations were misplaced.

— salman rushdie, the enchantress of florence