"Women are like an iron..."

Carlos Ruis Zafon in his novel The Shadow of the Wind (2004) writes: " The trouble is that man, going back to Freud [...], heats up like  a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand, heats up like an iron, slowly, over a low heat, like a tasty stew. But then, once she is heated up, there's no stopping her."