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Art Is Always An Energy Exchange.

-Erica Jong

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Art Is Always An

Erica Jong

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Art Is Always An Energy Exchange.

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I Think We’re [men And Women] More Similar. In That We All Deal With Our Fantasy Lives And Sometimes Are Disappointed By Reality.

Keeping A Journal Implies Hope.

Keeping A Journal

Beware Of Books. They Are More Than Innocent Assemblages Of Paper And Ink And String And Glue. If They Are Any Good, They Have The Spirit Of The Author Within. Authors Are Rogues And Ruffians And Easy Lays. They Are Gluttons For Sweets And Savories. They Devour Life And Always Want More. They Have Sap, Spirit, Sex. Books Are Panderers. The Jews Are Not Wrong To Worship Books. A Real Book Has Pheromones And Sprouts Grass Through Its Cover.

I've Become More Conservative About Sex As I've Gotten Older.

We Write Poems / As Leaves Give Oxygen - / So We Can Breathe.

As Yet We Use Our Media Only For Selling Things - Including, Of Course, Political Candidates. What Will Happen When Someone Masters The Art Of Selling Souls?

Never Joke With The Press. Irony Does Not Translate Into Newsprint.

At Times It Is Strangely Sedative To Know The Extent Of Your Own Powerlessness.

I Believe I Belong To The Last Literary Generation, The Last Generation, That Is, For Whom Books Are A Religion.

Books Go Out Into The World, Travel Mysteriously From Hand To Hand, And Somehow Find Their Way To The People Who Need Them At The Times When They Need Them ... Cosmic Forces Guide Such Passings-along.

A Dreary Censorship, And Self-censorship, Has Been Imposed On Books By The Centralization Of The Book Industry.

Not Everybody Has To Be A Parent. In Fact, In An Overpopulated World Where Our Resources Are Shrinking, It Would Be Wonderful If People Who Didn't Want Children Felt Free To Say So. In The 1970s, There Was More Tolerance For The Idea That Not Everybody Needs To Be A Biological Parent.

At Fifty The Madwoman In The Attic Breaks Loose, Stomps Down The Stairs, And Sets Fire To The House. She Won't Be Imprisoned Anymore.

Writers Are Doubters, Compulsives, Self-flagellants. The Torture Only Stops For Brief Moments.

Blaming Women Is Always In Fashion.

Gossip Is The Opiate Of The Oppressed.

Men Must Be Stripped Of Arrogance And Women Must Become Independent For Any Mutually Nurturing Alliance To Endure Between The Sexes.

You Must Find The Right Voice (or Voices) For The Timbre That Can Convince A Reader To Give Himself Up To You.

We Find Our Calling Or It Finds Us, And It's A Sin Against The Fates Not To Use Your Talent When You Have It.

If We Ban Whatever Offends Any Group In Our Diverse Society, We Will Soon Have No Art, No Culture, No Humor, No Satire. Satire Is By Its Nature Offensive. So Is Much Art And Political Discourse. The Value Of These Expressions Far Outweighs Their Risk.

Diverse Society

A Baby's Mother Also Needs A Mother.

I Have Lived My Life According To This Principle: If I'm Afraid Of It, Then I Must Do It.

I Understand That Unless You Have A Government Of Laws, Rather Than A Government Of People, You Cannot Protect Dissent. And I Understand, As A Woman Who Probably Would Have Been Burned In The Marketplace For Witchcraft Only About 200 Years Ago, That I Need The First Amendment More Than Anybody Does. And That Even If I Am Repelled By Child Pornography Or Bob Guccione's Productions, That I Have To Protect Those Things, Because Essentially It's In My Self-interest To Do So.

I Know So Many Women In Their Fifties, Sixties And Seventies Who Delight In Being On Their Own. It's Amazing. They Don't See Any Stigma Attached To It. We Don't Need A Man To Prove Our Identity Anymore.

As Women, We Can't Look Old. We Can't Be Fat. We're Supposed To Look Like The 14-year-old Models In Vogue, Who Are Younger And Younger And Skinnier And Skinnier, And They Are Air-brushed And Contoured And Photoshopped.

Women Tend To Be Preservers Of The Social Structure, Of Marriage. They Don't Want To Upset Their Husbands Or Their Significant Others. They Don't Want To Hurt People.

I Do Believe That In Every Age There Are People Whose Consciousness Transcends Their Own Time And That These People, Whether Fictional Or Historical, Are Those With Whom We Most Closely Identify And Those About Whom We Most Enjoy Reading.

The Most Important Education You Get Is Your Own - The One You Learn In Solitude.

Anger Is Really Disappointed Hope.

I Have Accepted Fear As A Part Of Life - Specifically The Fear Of Change... I Have Gone Ahead Despite The Pounding In The Heart That Says: Turn Back.

No One Ever Found Wisdom Without Also Being A Fool.

Sometimes It Was Worth All The Disadvantages Of Marriage Just To Have That: One Friend In An Indifferent World.

It's Hard To Do Fiction And Nonfiction Simultaneously.

Fiction And Nonfiction

I Mostly Hate Organized Religion, Which I Think Is A Force For The Oppression Of Women And Creates Warfare.

Nothing Quite Has Reality For Me Till I Write It All Down--revising And Embellishing As I Go. I'm Always Waiting For Things To Be Over So I Can Get Home And Commit Them To Paper.

Flesh Is Merely A Lesson. We Learn It & Pass On.

What Was The Point Of Spending Your Life With Someone You Were Always Looking For Ways To Decieve?

Memory Is The Crux Of Our Humanity. Without Memory We Have No Identities. That Is Really Why I Am Committing An Autobiography.

Dogs Come Into Our Lives To Teach Us About Love And Loyalty. They Depart To Teach Us About Loss. A New Dog Never Replaces An Old Dog; It Merely Expands The Heart. If You Have Loved Many Dogs, Your Heart Is Very Big.

Everyone Has Talent. What Is Rare Is The Courage To Follow The Talent To The Dark Place Where It Leads.

Each Artist Or Writer Who Works In Venice Comes To Believe That The City Yields Its Most Special Secret To Him Or Her Alone.

I Am Thinking Of The Onion Again. . . . Not Self-righteous Like The Proletarian Potato, Nor A Siren Like The Apple. No Show-off Like The Banana. But A Modest, Self-effacing Vegetable, Questioning, Introspective, Peeling Itself Away, Or Merely Radiating Halos Like Ripples.

Courage Is The Only Magic Worth Having.

Feminism Is Really The Right Of Women To Be Full Human Beings And To Not Be Defined Only By Their Childbearing Function. Feminism Is Really The Right Of Women To Be Human Beings. That's It, Yet That's So Frightening To A Lot Of People. A Full Human Being Wants Satisfying Work And Love. A Full Human Being Is Entitled To Both, And Is Not Simply Defined By Only One Aspect Of Her Being.

If We Can Be Sufficient Unto Ourselves, We Need Fear No Entangling Webs.

Why Does Life Need Evidence Of Life?

Many People Today Believe That Cynicism Requires Courage. Actually, Cynicism Is The Height Of Cowardice. It Is Innocence And Open-heartednes S That Requires The True Courage -- However Often We Are Hurt As A Result Of It.

When You Start Having Lunch And Actually Eating, It's Already Over.

[henry Miller] Was Such A Scribomaniac That Even When He Lived In The Same House As Lawrence Durrell They Often Exchanged Letters. For Most Of His Life, Henry Wrote Literally Dozens Of Letters A Day To People He Could Have Easily Engaged In Conversation - And Did. The Writing Process, In Short, Was Essential. As It Is To All Real Writers, Writing Was Life And Breath To Him. He Put Out Words As A Tree Puts Out Leaves.

The Only Rule I Have When Writing Is To Try To Tell The Truth. That Doesn't Mean You Can't Exaggerate, Edit, Rewrite Things To Make Them More Dramatic. But Emotional Truth Is What I Look For In Writing.

There's Another Part Of Getting Older That's Just Wonderful. Which Is You See The Way The Stories Turn Out With Peoples' Lives.

Poetry Is Fired By Love.

But If The Gods Do Not Exist At All - Then We Are Lost,' I Said. On The Contrary - We Are Found!' Said Aesop. But When We Are Afraid, Who Can We Turn To, If Not The Gods?' Ourselves. We Turn To Ourselves Anyway. We Only Pretend There Are Gods And That They Care About Us. It Is A Comforting Falsehood.

Because I Loved Myself, I Was Loved.

Certain Very Old People Reach An Age Where Every Funeral Becomes Some Sort Of Insane Confirmation Of Strength, Rather Than Of Vulnerability, As It Is When We Are In Our Thirties Or Forties And Our Friends Die.

Women Are Not The Richer Sex. Women Are Not Equal In Society.

Birth Is The Start Of Loneliness And Loneliness The Start Of Poetry.

Photographs Are The Most Curious Indicators Of Reality.

Creativity Demands Nothing Less Than All You Have. Talent Alone Is Never Enough.

Every Time I Catch Myself Saying, "oh No, You Shouldn't Try That," I Think, "yes, I Should."

... What Is Great Poetry, After All, But The Continuation Of The Human Voice After Death?

The Dilemma Is That If One Does Not Risk Anything One Risks Even More.

Perfectionism Is The Enemy Of Art. Since Art Is Essentially Divine Play, Not Dogged Work, It Often Happens That As One Becomes More Professionally Driven One Also Becomes Less Capriciously Playful.

Perhaps All Artists Were, In A Sense, Housewives: Tenders Of The Earth Household.

Spring, / You Are A Pinking Shears: You Cut / Fresh Edges On The World.

Without The Gods, How Would I Sing?' I Asked. With Your Own Voice,' He Said.

Why Do Analysts Always Answer A Question With A Question?

Pregnancy Seemed Like A Tremendous Abdication Of Control. Something Growing Inside You Which Would Eventually Usurp Your Life.

All Natural Disasters Are Comforting Because They Reaffirm Our Impotence, In Which, Otherwise, We Might Stop Believing. At Times It Is Strangely Sedative To Know The Extent Of Your Own Powerlessness.

Good Sex Is A Mystery. Perhaps Humping And Pumping Is Not A Mystery, But Good Sex Is A Mystery, And How Human Beings Become Truly Intimate Remains A Mystery.

A Book Burrows Into Your Life In A Very Profound Way Because The Experience Of Reading Is Not Passive.

Beware Of The Man Who Denounces Psychiatrists; / He Is Afraid.

If We Don't Risk Anything, We Risk Even More.

A Concern With 'public Morality' Is - If Not The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel - The First Foray Of The Fascist.

Anybody Who Instantly Goes From Being A Poet And A Graduate Student To Being A Public Figure Has To Be In A State Of Shock. First People Want To Praise You, And Then They Want To Attack You. No One Can Prepare You For It.

Friends Love Misery, In Fact. Sometimes, Especially If We Are Too Lucky Or Too Successful Or Too Pretty, Our Misery Is The Only Thing That Endears Us To Our Friends.

Many, Many People Have Done A Lot More Sexual Experimentation Than I Have.

Experimentation

There Were 117 Psychoanalysts On The Pan Am Flight To Vienna And I'd Been Treated By At Least Six Of Them. And Married A Seventh.

I Hope We Don't Have To Keep Going Back Over The Same Territory And Winning The Same Rights Over And Over Again. The Battle For Birth Control. The Battle For Abortion. The Parity Of Women's Health. It's Very Depressing To Think That You Win These Rights, But Then You Have To Win Them Again, And Again, And Again, And Fight The Same Battles Over And Over.

Every Time Women Make Tremendous Strides, The Right Wing Gets Terrified And Creates Laws Making It Hard To Get An Abortion Or Birth Control.

Feminism Is Teaching. I've Gotten A Lot Of Pleasure Pushing Younger Writers That I've Met And Worked With.

I Don't Think That I Had Any Idea That 'fear Of Flying' Would Become A Part Of The Culture. I Had No Idea That It Would Go All Over The World And Be Published In Chinese And Serbo-croat And So On.

Friends Love Misery... Our Misery Is What Endears Us To Our Friends.

It Is The Nature Of Those Books We Call Classics To Wait Patiently On The Shelf For Us To Grow Into Them.

I Have Ne'er Been In A Chamber With A Lawyer When I Did Not Wish Either To Scream With Desperation Or Else Fall Into The Deepest Of Sleeps, E'en When The Matter Concern'd My Own Future Most Profoundly.

I Am Against Censorship. I Prefer The Chaos Of Uncontrollable Communication Of All Sorts To Selective Banning Of Certain Materials. I Do Not Think Human Beings Can Be Trusted To Be Above Politics And To Promote The Common Good. One Group's Common Good Is Another Group's Evil.

Souls Have Neither Sex Nor Colour.

If You Don't Have Time To Do It Right You Must Have Time To Do It Right You Must Have Time To Do It Over. If You Don't Know Where You Are Going, How Do You Know When You Get There? If You Don't Risk Anything, You Risk Even More.

I Actually Think Leaving Your Children Alone To Fantasize, To Write, To Make Projects On Their Own Is Good For Them. Breathing Down Their Necks Is A Form Of Control. Children Should Have Their Own Space.

Solitude Is Un-american.

Do You Want Me To Tell You Something Really Subversive? Love Is Everything It's Cracked Up To Be. That's Why People Are So Cynical About It. It Really Is Worth Fighting For, Being Brave For, Risking Everything For. And The Trouble Is, If You Don't Risk Anything, You Risk Even More.

The Passion That One Soul Hath For God Cannot Be Judged By Another.

I Was Always A Feminist. My Mother Was A Feminist; My Grandmother Was A Feminist. I Always Understood Women Had To Fight Very Hard To Do What They Wanted To Do In The World - That It Wasn't An Easy Choice. But I Think The Most Important Part Is That We All Want The Right To Be Taken Seriously As Human Beings, And To Use Our Talents Without Reservation, And That's Still Not Possible For Women.

As Long As I'm Facing The Right Direction, It Doesn't Matter The Size Of My Steps.

Solitude Is Considered Un-american.

I Know Some Good Marriages-marriages Where Both People Are Just Trying To Get Through Their Days By Helping Each Other, Being Good To Each Other.

If We Are All Made Of God, It Is Our Friends Who Remind Us. We Pass The Gift Of God To Them. They Pass It Back To Us When We Need It Most.

Betrayal Betrays The Betrayer.

Most Sex Doesn't Really Bring People Together. You Have To Reach A Certain Level Of Connection, I Think, And That's Pretty Rare.

Love Is Love, But Marriage Is An Investment.

We Write As If Our Lives Depended Upon It. They Do.

Throughout Much Of History, Women Writers Have Capitulated To Male Standards, And Have Paid Too Much Heed To What Virginia Woolf Calls "the Angel In The House." She Is That Little Ghost Who Sits On One's Shoulder While One Writes And Whispers, "be Nice, Don't Say Anything That Will Embarrass The Family, Don't Say Anything Your Man Will Disapprove Of ..." [ellipsis In Original] The "angel In The House" Castrates One's Creativity Because It Deprives One Of Essential Honesty, And Many Women Writers Have Yet To Win The Freedom To Be Honest With Themselves.

It Takes Courage To Lead A Life. Any Life.

Each Of Us Only Feels The Torn Lining Of His Own Coat And Sees The Wholeness Of The Other Person's.

The Body Is Wiser Than Its Inhabitants. The Body Is The Soul. The Body Is God’s Messenger.

Plot Is Just A Fancy Way Of Saying 'and Then.

In Any Triangle, Who Is The Betrayer, Who The Unseen Rival, And Who The Humiliated Lover? Oneself, Oneself, And No One But Oneself!

Before Things Are Written Down They Don't Exist In Quite The Same Way. The Act Of Fixing Them In Words Gives Them A Kind Of Currency That Can Be Traded.

Biography Is Essentially A Collaborative Art, The Latest Biographer Collaborating With All Those Who Wrote Earlier.

Few Women See Power As An End In Itself. The Point Of Power Is The Freedom To Cultivate Roses.

The Absolute Bedrock Of Our Independence Is Having Control Over Our Own Bodies. You Cannot Be Independent If The Government Or Someone Else Says Whether Or Not You Can Use Birth Control. Unless You're In Charge Of Your Body, You're Not In Charge Of Anything. I Think That's Really The Bottom Line Of Feminism.

Art Is Not Advocacy And Advocacy Is Not Art.

No One To Blame! That Was Why Most People Led Lives They Hated, With People They Hated. How Wonderful To Have Someone To Blame! How Wonderful To Live With One's Nemesis! You May Be Miserable, But You Feel Forever In The Right. You May Be Fragmented, But You Feel Absolved Of All The Blame For It. Take Your Life In Your Own Hands, And What Happens? A Terrible Thing: No One To Blame.

I Think That The Joy Of Writing A Novel Is The Self-exploratio N That Emerges And Also That Wonderful Feeling Of Playing God With The Characters. When I Sit Down At My Writing Desk, Time Seems To Vanish. ... I Think The Most Important Thing For A Writer Is To Be Locked In A Study.

People In The Land Of Lala Look Like Expensive Wax Fruit. And They Work Hard To Achieve That Look.

What Are The Sources Of Poetry? Love And Death And The Paradox Of Love And Death. All Poetry From The Beginning Is About Eros And Thanatos. Those Are The Only Subjects. And How Eros And Thanatos Interweave.

Great Loves Have Legs And Wings. They Are Substantial. They Do Not Dissapate So Easily... Great Loves Have Staying Power. Or So I Told Myself.

Poetry Is What We Turn To In The Most Emotional Moments Of Our Life - When A Beloved Friend Dies, When A Baby Is Born Or When We Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

Though My Friends Envied Me Because I Always Seemed So Cheerful And Confident, I Was Secretly Terrified Of Practically Everything.

The Lives Of Great Men Are More Oft' At Variance With Their Profess'd Phillosophies Than Consistent With 'em.

A Soul Is Partly Given, Partly Wrought; Remember Always That You Are The Maker Of Your Own Soul.

All People Believe Their Suffering Is Greater Than Others.

Take Your Life In Your Own Hands, And What Happens? A Terrible Thing: No One To Blame.

As A Reader, I Want A Book To Kidnap Me Into Its World. Its World Must Make My So-called Real World Seem Flimsy. Its World Must Lure Me To Return. When I Close The Book, I Should Feel Bereft.

It Took Me Years To Learn To Sit At My Desk For More Than Two Minutes At A Time, To Put Up With The Solitude And The Terror Of Failure, And The Godawful Silence And The White Paper.

The Future Is Merely A Shadow Which Blocks Out The Joys Of The Present And Emphasizes The Miseries Of The Past.

You Must Have A Certain Amount Of Maturity To Be A Poet. Seldom Do Sixteen-year-olds Know Themselves Well Enough.

I Had Been A Feminist All My Life, But The Big Problem Was How To Make Your Feminism Jibe With You Unappeasable Hunger For Male Bodies.

To Name Oneself Is The First Act Of Both The Poet And The Revolutionary.

Since Flesh Can't Stay, We Pass The Words Along.

We Are Finally Driven To Monogamy Not By Morality But By Exhaustion.

Women's Books Are Kind Of Discriminated Against. If A Man Writes A Book About His Family Stories, People Think Of It As Literature. If It's A Woman, She's 'spilling Her Guts,' And It's Not Art.

Compose With Utter Freedom And Edit With Utter Discipline.

Ken, My Husband, Just Smelled Like He Belonged To Me. I'm Not Talking About Hygiene. I'm Talking About When You Hug Him, He Either Feels Like A Member Of Your Tribe Or Not. It's Their Scent.

I Don't Cook. My Mother Didn't Cook. My Daughter Doesn't Cook.

I Think Professionalism Is Important, And Professionalism Means You Get Paid.

My Advice To You Is Get Married: If You Find A Good Wife You'll Be Happy; If Not, You'll Become A Philosopher." - Socrates (470-399 B.c.) "advice Is What We Ask For When We Already Know The Answer But Wish We Didn't

Life Has No Plot. It Is By Far More Interesting Than Anything You Can Say About It.

Turning Fifty ... Is Like Flying: Hours Of Boredom Punctuated By Moments Of Sheer Terror.

Mediocre Prose Might Be Read As An Escape, Might Be Spoken On Television By Actors, Or Mouthed In Movies. But Mediocre Poetry Did Not Exist At All. If Poetry Wasn't Good, It Wasn't Poetry. It Was That Simple.

People Always Think That History Proceeds In A Straight Line. It Doesn't. Social Attitudes Don't Change In A Straight Line. There's Always A Backlash Against Progressive Ideas.

Court, In Our Society, Is Often The Last Resort Of Stubbornness.

You Are Always Naked When You Start Writing; You Are Always As If You Had Never Written Anything Before; You Are Always A Beginner. Shakespeare Wrote Without Knowing He Would Become Shakespeare

It Is For This, Partly, That I Write. How Can I Know What I Think Unless I See What I Write.

Murky Language Means Someone Wants To Pick Your Pocket.

We Were Not Human Beings Going Through Spiritual Experiences; We Were Spiritual Beings Going Through Human Experiences, In Order To Grow.

Human Experience

I Look Forward And See Myself Look Back.

We Need Poetry Most At Those Moments When Life Astounds Us With Losses, Gains, Or Celebrations. We Need It Most When We Are Most Hurt, Most Happy, Most Downcast, Most Jubilant. Poetry Is The Language We Speak In Times Of Greatest Need. And The Fact That It Is An Endangered Species In Our Culture Tells Us That We Are In Deep Trouble.

The Only People Worth Writing About Are Those About Whom The Last Word Cannot Be Said.

I Don't Know What The Definition Of Pornography Is And Nobody Else Does Either. Pornography Is Somebody Else's Erotica That You Don't Like. People Are Interested In Their Own Sexuality And They've Always Reflected It In Their Art. End Of Story.

Isn't That The Problem? That Women Have Been Swindled For Centuries Into Substituting Adornment For Love, Fashion (as It Were) For Passion?

The Worst Thing About Jealousy Is How Low It Makes You Reach.

A Poem (surely Someone Has Said This Before) Is A One-night Stand, A Short Story A Love Affair, And A Novel A Marriage.

I've Kept Journals At Many Times In My Life Starting From When I Was About 13 Or 14. But It's Boring And Contrived To Keep A Journal Every Day. Better To Write As The Mood Strikes.

There Are No Atheists On Turbulent Airplanes.

You Have To Enjoy Being A Woman. Why Should Being A Woman Be Such A Negative Thing Where You Always Have To Improve Yourself? I Have Never In My Entire Life Met A Man Who Didn't Want To Go To Bed With Me Because I Was Too Fat.

But We Should Ask The Question: Why Should A Writer Be More Than A Writer? Why Should A Writer Be A Guru? Why Are We Supposed To Be Psychiatrists? Isn't It Enough To Write And Tell The Truth? It's Not Like Telling The Truth Is Common. Writers Are The Earthworms Of Society. We Aerate The Soil. That's Enough.

I Am Not Sure If Love Is A Salve Or Just A Deeper Kind Of Wound.

My Grandchildren Are Fabulous And Funny.

I Tried To Keep Myself Away From Him By Using Con Words Like "fidelity" And "adultery", By Telling Myself That He Would Interfere With My Work, That I Had Him I'd Be Too Happy To Write. I Tried To Tell Myself I Was Hurting Bennett, Hurting Myself, Making A Spectacle Of Myself. I Was. But Nothing Helped. I Was Possessed. The Minute He Walked Into A Room And Smiled At Me, I Was A Goner.

Being A Daughter Is Only Half The Equation; Bearing One Is The Other.

I Never Became A Writer For The Money. I Am A Poet First. Even Getting Published Is A Miracle For Poets.

Growing Up Female In America. What A Liability! You Grew Up With Your Ears Full Of Cosmetic Ads, Love Songs, Advice Columns, Whoreoscopes, Hollywood Gossip, And Moral Dilemmas On The Level Of Tv Soap Operas. What Litanies The Advertisers Of The Good Life Chanted At You! What Curious Catechisms!

Poetry Is The Inner Life Of A Culture, Its Nervous System, Its Deepest Way Of Imagining The World. A Culture That Ignores Its Poets, Chokes Off Its Nervous System And Becomes Mortally Ill.

Generations Of Women Have Sacrificed Their Lives To Become Their Mothers. But We Do Not Have That Luxury Any More. The World Has Changed Too Much To Let Us Have The Lives Our Mothers Had. And We Can No Longer Afford The Guilt We Feel At Not Being Our Mothers. We Cannot Afford Any Guilt That Pulls Us Back To The Past. We Have To Grow Up, Whether We Want To Or Not. We Have To Stop Blaming Men And Mothers And Seize Every Second Of Our Lives With Passion. We Can No Longer Afford To Waste Our Creativity. We Cannot Afford Spiritual Laziness.

What All The Ads And Whorescopes Seemed To Imply Was That If Only You Took Proper Care Of Your Smells, Your Hair, Your Boobs, Your Eyelashes, Your Armpits, Your Crotch, Your Stars, Your Scars, Your Choice Of Scotch In Bars - You Would Meet A Beautiful Powerful, Potent, And Rich Man Who Would Satisfy Every Longing, Fill Every Hole, Make Your Heart Skip A Beat (or Stand Still), Make You Misty, And Fly You To The Moon (preferably On Gossamer Wings), Where You Would Live Totally Satisfied Forever.

Whenever I Go Anywhere But Italy For A Vacation, I Always Feel Vaguely Disappointed, As If I Have Made A Mistake.

Poems, Like Dreams, Are A Sort Of Royal Road To The Unconscious. They Tell You What Your Secret Self Cannot Express.

Really True Intimacy Is Rare And It Depends On Other Things Besides Sex.

Singularity Shows Something Wrong In The Mind.

There Is No Loneliness Like The Loneliness Of A Dead Marriage.

Men And Women, Women And Men. It Will Never Work.

When I'm Sitting At The Desk Not Being Able To Write Line One, It's Silence And Despair! It's Not So Easy To Put The Pen To The Legal Pad Or Type The First Sentence On The Computer Screen.

What Is The Fatal Charm Of Italy? What Do We Find There That Can Be Found Nowhere Else? I Believe It Is A Certain Permission To Be Human, Which Other Places, Other Countries, Lost Long Ago.

The Perfect Man Is The True Partner. Not A Bed Partner Nor A Fun Partner, But A Man Who Will Shoulder Burdens Equally With You And Possess That Quality Of Joy.

What A Damnably Lonely Profession Writing Is! In Order To Do It, One Must Banish The World, And Having Banished It, One Feels Cosmically Alone.

I Went For Years Not Finishing Anything. Because, Of Course, When You Finish Something You Can Be Judged...i Had Poems Which Were Re-written So Many Times I Suspect It Was Just A Way Of Avoiding Sending Them Out.

Images Are ... A Kind Of Emotional Shorthand.

The Aim Of My Writing Is To Utterly Remove The Distance Between Author And Reader So That The Book Becomes A Sort Of Semipermeable Membrane Through Which Feelings, Ideas, Nutrients Pass.

Men Have Always Detested Women's Gossip Because They Suspect The Truth: Their Measurements Are Being Taken And Compared.

I Myself Hate That Old Hemingwayesque Paradigm Of The Writer As Prizefighter And I Have Tried Hard To Create An Alternate One For Myself. When Anne Sexton Admonished Me, "we Are All Writing God's Poem," I Took It To Mean There Should Be No Competition Between Writers Because We Are All Involved In A Common Project, A Common Prayer. But To Gore's And Norman's Generation, Particularly Those Male Writers Who Served In The Second World War, The Prizefighter Paradigm Remains.

Where Is Hollywood Located? Chiefly Between The Ears. In That Part Of The American Brain Lately Vacated By God.

Surviving Means Being Born Over And Over.

Advice Is What We Ask For When We Already Know The Answer But Wish We Didn't.

We Need Quiet Time To Examine Our Lives Openly And Honestly...spending Quiet Time Alone Gives Your Mind An Opportunity To Renew Itself And Create Order.- Susan Taylor--everyone Has A Talent. What Is Rare Is The Courage To Nurture It In Solitude And To Follow The Talent To The Dark Places Where It Leads.

I Have Not Ceased Being Fearful, But I Have Ceased To Let Fear Control Me.

Fear And Courage

We All Have Fantasies About Sex That Are More Perfect Than Anything In Reality.

There Is Nothing Fiercer Than A Failed Artist. The Energy Remains, But, Having No Outlet, It Implodes In A Great Black Fart Of Rage Which Smokes Up All The Inner Windows Of The Soul. Horrible As Successful Artists Often Are, There Is Nothing Crueler Or More Vain Than A Failed Artist.

Show Me A Woman Who Doesn't Feel Guilty And I'll Show You A Man.

Divorce Is My Generation's Coming Of Age Ceremony - A Ritual Scarring That Makes Anything That Happens Afterward Seem Bearable.

You Can't Be Creative And Still Be A Good Girl.

I Don't Believe In Organized Religion. I Believe That People Should Try To Connect With Their Own Life Force And Let It Lead Them To Do With Their Lives What They Will Find Satisfying.

Is There A Phrase In The English Language More Fraught With Menace Than A Tax Audit?

Every Time We Hit An Air Pocket And The Plane Dropped About Five Hundred Feet (leaving My Stomach In My Mouth) I Vowed To Give Up Sex, Bacon, And Air Travel If I Ever Made It Back To Terra Firma In One Piece.

The Unconscious Of An Artist Is Her Greatest Treasure. It Is What Transmutes The Dross Of Autobiography Into The Gold Of Myth.

Greatest Treasure

Any System Was A Straightjacket If You Insisted On Adhering To It So Totally And Humorlessly.

The Stones Themselves Are Thick With History, And Those Cats That Dash Through The Alleyways Must Surely Be The Ghosts Of The Famous Dead In Feline Disguise.

In A Way Women Are Fleshier Because Of Estrogen. It's Hard For Us To Lose Weight Because When We Get Super Skinny We Don't Ovulate. Women In Camps During The Holocaust Didn't Menstruate And Didn't Ovulate. They Were Starving; They Were Terrified. Why Emulate That Condition? It's Nonsensical To Me.

Art Keeps One Young, I Think, Because It Keeps One Perpetually A Beginner, Perpetually A Child.

I Think Poetry Is The Best Thing I Do. It's Certainly The Purest. I Seem To Switch Gears Without Too Much Trouble. Non-fiction Is In Many Ways The Easiest To Write.

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