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But Come Back In November Or December, In February Or March, When The Fog, La Nebbia, Settles Upon The City Like A Marvelous Monster, And You Will Have Little Trouble Believing That Things Can Appear And Disappear In This Labyrinthine City, Or That Time Here Could Easily Slip In Its Sprockets And Take You, Willingly Or Unwillingly, Back.

-Erica Jong

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But Come Back In

Erica Jong

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But Come Back In November Or December, In February Or March, When The Fog, La Nebbia, Settles Upon The City Like A Marvelous Monster, And You Will Have Little Trouble Believing That Things Can Appear And Disappear In This Labyrinthine City, Or That Time Here Could Easily Slip In Its Sprockets And Take You, Willingly Or Unwillingly, Back.

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I Don't Think You Will Ever Fully Understand How You've Touched My Life And Made Me Who I Am. I Don't Think You Could Ever Know Just How Truly Special You Are That Even On The Darkest Nights You Are My Brightest Star

All My Forebears Worked For A Living. My Grandfather Painted Portraits. My Mother Too. My Aunt Painted Seascapes.

The Best Slave Does Not Need To Be Beaten. She Beats Herself.

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

The Soul Is Awakened Through Service.

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.

I'm Not Classically Pretty; I've Always Been Too Heavy; I've Had Thyroid Disease And It's Very Hard For Me To Lose Weight - But I've Always Had Men Pursue Me. I've Always Had That 'it' Thing. God Knows Why. Maybe It's Pheromones, I Don't Know.

No One Ever Found Wisdom Without Also Being A Fool.

Coupling Doesn't Always Have To Do With Sex ... Two People Holding Each Other Up Like Flying Buttresses. Two People Depending On Each Other And Babying Each Other And Defending Each Other Against The World Outside. Sometimes It Was Worth All The Disadvantages Of Marriage Just To Have That: One Friend In An Indifferent World.

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.

I Am Old Enough To Know That Laughter, Not Anger, Is The True Revelation.

Each One An Antidote To The One That Went Before. Each One A Reaction, An About-face, A Rebound.

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.

And What If I Don't Want Forgiveness?

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.

Writers Are Always At The Edge Of The Inferno, And The Fire Is Licking At Our Toes. Luckily, This Turns Us On!

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?

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

What Storyteller Is Adequate To Her Story? The Story Carries Us Along, Bottles On The Tide, Each With Our Secret Mesage And The Fervent Hope That It Does Not Turn Out To Be Blank.

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

When I Was A Ten-year Old Bookworm And Used To Kiss The Dust Jacket Pictures Of Authors As If They Were Icons, It Used To Amaze Me That These Remote People Could Provoke Me To Love.

The Greatest Feminists Have Also Been The Greatest Lovers. I'm Thinking Not Only Of Mary Wollstonecraft And Her Daughter Mary Shelley, But Of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, And Of Course Sappho. You Cannot Divide Creative Juices From Human Juices. And As Long As Juicy Women Are Equated With Bad Women, We Will Err On The Side Of Being Bad.

I See The Whole Episode In My Memory As If It Were A Very Crisply Photographed Black And White Movie. Directed By Bergman Perhaps.we Are Playing Ourselves In The Movie Version. If Only We Could Escape From Always Having To Play Ourselves !

Black And White

Sex Is God's Joke On The Human Race ... If We Didn't Have Sex To Make Us Ridiculous, She Would Have Had To Think Up Something Else Instead.

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

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

I Am Never So Calm As After I Have Written. And The Next Morning I Will Feel The Familiar Anxiety And I Will Have To Begin The Process All Over Again.

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.

One Writes Not By Will But By Surrender.

It's Important To Know What You're Going To Spend Your Life On, And The Only Way You're Going To Find That Is By Connecting With The Force Inside Yourself.

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.

The Truth Is Simple, You Do Not Die From Love. You Only Wish You Did.

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

When I Sit Down At My Writing Desk, Time Seems To Vanish. I Think It's A Wonderful Way To Spend One's Life.

How Could One Create Life With Someone Who Represented Death?

You Reach A Point In Life Where You Realize That You Might As Well Do What You Need To Do, Because Your Being Loved Or Not Being Loved Is Really A Function Of The People You Encounter And Not Of Yourself. That Is An Immensely Liberating Insight.

Images Are ... A Kind Of Emotional Shorthand.

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.

Love Is Everything It's Cracked Up To Be. It Really Is Worth Fighting For, Being Brave For, Risking Everything For.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

In A World Not Made For Women, Criticism And Ridicule Follow Us All The Days Of Our Lives. Usually They Are Indications That We Are Doing Something Right.

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.

What I Discovered Was Is That It's Rare To Find A Person That You Feel Very Intimate With, And You Can Sleep With Lots Of People And Not Find What You're Looking For.

We've Lost More Men To Homosexuality Than We Ever Did In Two World Wars.

Exceptional People Are Often Called Crazy By The Ordinary World.

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

A Man Assumes That A Woman's Refusal Is Just Part Of A Game. Or, At Any Rate, A Lot Of Men Assume That. When A Man Says No, It's No. When A Woman Says No, It's Yes, Or At Least Maybe. There Is Even A Joke To That Effect. And Little By Little, Women Begin To Believe In This View Of Themselves.

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.

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.

Women Are Individuals In Parenting, And Why Not?

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

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.

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

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

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

Of All The Foolish Fears Of Humankind, Fear Of The Future Is By Far The Most Foolish.

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

Someday Every Woman Will Have Orgasms- Like Every Family Has Color Tv- And We Can All Get On With The Business Of Life.

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

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

Fear And Courage

In Freeing Myself From The Romantic Dream Of Finding Another Man To Come Along And Rescue Me, I Learned That No One Can Rescue Me Except Myself.

Surviving Means Being Born Over And Over.

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

The Camera Creates A Magical Transformation. It's Not Enough To Exist; We Must Chronicle That Existence. ... Narrative- And Image-making Creatures Like Humans Don't Feel Any Experience Is Complete Unless It's Recorded.

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.

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

It Takes A Spasm Of Love To Write A Poem.

I Remember Everything But Forgive Anyway.

Remembers Everything

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.

I Think I've Become More Cynical About Sex. Meaning, I Don't Think Sex In And Of Itself Leads To An Epiphany.

Singularity Shows Something Wrong In The Mind.

Hate Generalizes; Love Is Particular.

I Have Enormous Pride In The Survival Of The Jewish People, The Cultural Heritage Of The Jewish People, But I'm Not Observant, And I Don't Belong To A Synagogue. I Don't Go To Temple On High Holy Days, But I'm Proud To Be Jewish.

I Think The Jews Are An Amazing Group Of People And Their Survival Is Amazing.

It's Hard To Do Fiction And Nonfiction Simultaneously.

Fiction And Nonfiction

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.

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.

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

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.

Every Country Gets The Circus It Deserves. Spain Gets Bullfights. Italy The Church. America Hollywood.

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

Never Follow A Dog Act. You Know You're On The Skids When You Play Yourself In The Movie Version Of Your Life.

Despite All The Cynical Things Writers Have Said About Writing For Money, The Truth Is We Write For Love. That Is Why It Is So Easy To Exploit Us.

I Write Lustily And Humorously. It Isn't Calculated; It's The Way I Think. I've Invented A Writing Style That Expresses Who I Am.

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

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

We Are So Scared Of Being Judged That We Look For Every Excuse To Procrastinate.

Procrastination

Young People Never Believe In The Possibility Of Their Own Deaths. That's One Reason Old Men Can Send Them To War.

Unhappiness Is Our Element. We Come To Believe We Can't Function Without It.

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.

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

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

We All Carry The Houses Of Our Youth Inside, And Our Parents, Too, Grown Small Enough To Fit Within Our Hearts.

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

The Desire For Magic Cannot Be Eradicated. Even The Most Supposedly Rational People Attempt To Practice Magic In Love And War. We Simultaneously Possess The Most Primitive Of Brain Stems And The Most Sophisticated Of Cortices. The Imperatives Of Each Coexist Uneasily.

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

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

In A Bad Marriage, Friends Are The Invisible Glue. If We Have Enough Friends, We May Go On For Years, Intending To Leave, Talking About Leaving -instead Of Actually Getting Up And Leaving.

Bad Relationship

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

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

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.

As Women Got Little Crumbs Of Power, Men Began To Act Paranoid - As If We'd Disabled Them Utterly. Do All Women Have To Keep Silent For Men To Speak? Do All Women Have To Be Legless For Men To Walk?

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

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

I Look Forward And See Myself Look Back.

We've Shown Again And Again, In Every Un Report On The Status Of Women, That Wherever Women Control Their Own Bodies And Have Access To Education, Societies Prosper. Men's Fortunes Go Up, Children's Fortunes Go Up. This Is Not News - It's Been Proven Repeatedly. Anywhere Those Things Are Threatened, We Have To Defend Them.

[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.

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.

All Authors Know That Any Book Is A Casting Of Runes, A Reading Of Cards, A Map Of The Palm And Heart. We Make Up The Ocean - Then Fall In. But We Also Write The Life Raft.

It's Useful To Know How Much Society's Holding You Back. My Mother Would Talk About How She Was Told By The Head Of Her Art School That She Was The Best Painter, But That She Wouldn't Get The Biggest Prize Because She Would Waste Her Talent By Having Children. I Think We Have To Get Honest With Girls About How They Can Expect The World To Block Them, And We Have To Prepare Girls, And Ourselves, To Break Through Those Blocks.

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.

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

If Sex And Creativity Are Often Seen By Dictators As Subversive Activities, It's Because They Lead To The Knowledge That You Own Your Own Body (and With It Your Own Voice), And That's The Most Revolutionary Insight Of All.

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

Most Sex Is Not Really Intimate.

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.

Sex Just As A Drive, As A Hormonal Drive, Is Not Very Interesting.

Very Interesting

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

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.

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

Beware The Lure Of A Handsome Face, The All Too Ready Assumption That The Lovely Façade Must Needs Have Lovely Chambers Within; For As 'tis With Great Houses, So, Too, With Great Men.

Home Is Where Your Books Are.

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

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

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.

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

The Only Difference Between Men And Women Is That Women Are Able To Create New Little Human Beings In Their Bodies While Simultaneously Writing Books, Driving Tractors, Working In Offices, Planting Crops - In General, Doing Everything Men Do.

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.

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.

The Older We Get, The More Jewish We Become In My Family.

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.

Women Are The Only Exploited Group In History To Have Been Idealized Into Powerlessness.

Souls Have Neither Sex Nor Colour.

A Book Is A Box Brimming With Incendiary Material. The Reader Strikes The Match.

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.

It Is A Sad Paradox That When Male Authors Impersonate Women ... They Are Said To Be Dealing With 'cosmic, Major Concerns' - But When We Impersonate Ourselves We Are Said To Be Writing 'women's Fiction' Or 'women's Poetry.

Photographs Are The Most Curious Indicators Of Reality.

Ambivalence Is A Wonderful Tune To Dance To. It Has A Rhythm All Its Own.

Compose With Utter Freedom And Edit With Utter Discipline.

If There's Anything The World Disdains More Than Uppity Young Women, It's Uppity Old Women. Dying Young Has Always Been A Woman's Best Career Move.

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

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

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

Fame Means Millions Of People Have The Wrong Idea Of Who You Are.

My Grandchildren Are Fabulous And Funny.

It Was Easy Enough To Kill Yourself In A Fit Of Despair. It Was Easy Enough To Play The Martyr. It Was Harder To Do Nothing. To Endure Your Life. To Wait.

There Is A Rhythm To The Ending Of A Marriage Just Like The Rhythm Of A Courtship, Only Backward.

My Generation Was Not Only Maligned In Book Reviews And Attacked In Graduate School But We Lived To See Our Adored And Adorable Daughters Wonder Why Feminism Had Become A Dirty Word.

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

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.

Courage Is The Only Magic Worth Having.

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.

Denounce Useless Guilt. Don’t Make A Cult Of Suffering. Live In The Now(or At Least The Soon). Always Do The Things You Fear Most. Courage Is An Acquired Taste Like Caviar. Trust All Joy. If The Evil Eye Fixes You In Its Gaze, Look Elsewhere. Get Ready To Be 87.

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.

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.

At Certain Historic Moments, Grandparents Took On Childrearing Responsibilities. In Many Cultures, They Still Do. Chinese Grandparents Who Are Able To Retire At 55 Are Seen All Over Beijing Bouncing Grandbabies. In The United States, We Can't Afford To Retire At 55.

Women Really Must Have Equal Pay For Equal Work, Equality In Work At Home, And Reproductive Choices. Men Must Press For These Things Also. They Must Cease To See Them As "women's Issues" And Learn That They Are Everyone's Issues - Essential To Survival On Planet Earth.

From Roman Times To The Present, Italy Has Been A Country To Fall In Love With - A Tribute To All That Is Enduring, Crazy, Pagan, Joyous, Melancholy, At Once Banal And Divine, In The Human Spirit.

Falling In Love

There Is A Rhythm To The Ending Of A Marriage Just Like The Rhythm Of A Courtship-only Backward. You Try To Start Again But Get Into Blaming Over And Over. Finally You Are Both Worn Out, Exhausted, Hopeless. Then Lawyers Are Called In To Pick Clean The Corpses. The Death Has Occurred Much Earlier.

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

I Am Not Quite Sure How Writing Changes Things, But I Know That It Does. It Is Indirect-like The Trails Of Earthworms Aerating The Earth. It Is Not Always Deliberate-like The Tails Of Glowing Dust Dragged By Comets.

I Prefer To Work In The Morning. I Get Up Now At Five In The Morning. In The Morning Is When I Feel Freshest.

As A Past President Of The Writers Guild, I Think Women Shouldn't Write For Free. Maybe You Have To Do It For A Time, To Make A Reputation, But I Think The Idea Of Giving Your Work Away Is The Beginning Of Authors Not Being Able To Make A Living.

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

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

Isn't It Our Job To Be Appalled By Our Parents? Isn't It Every Generation's Duty To Be Dismayed By The Previous Generation? And To Assert That We Are Different - Only To Discover Later That We Are Distressingly The Same?

Writing Has Often Been Accompanied By Terror, Silences, And Then Wild Bursts Of Private Laughter That Suddenly Make All The Dread Seem Worthwhile.

My Generation Of Young Female Writers Discovered That We Could Dictate The Form And Content Of Our Own Fiction.

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

You're Not Too Fat; You're Just In The Wrong Country.

There Is Simply No Dignified Way For A Woman To Live Alone. Oh, She Can Get Along Financially Perhaps (though Not Nearly As Well As A Man), But Emotionally She Is Never Left In Peace. Her Friends, Her Family, Her Fellow Workers Never Let Her Forget That Her Husbandlessness, Her Childlessness - Her Selfishness, In Short - Is A Reproach To The American Way Of Life.

Tis True That Tho' People Can Transcend Their Characters In Times Of Tranquillity, They Can Ne'er Do So In Times Of Tumult.

Women In America Read 'lifestyle' Pages Which Are Really Glorifications Of Shopping. They Teach Us We Must Veil Ourselves In Make-up To Be Loved. And We Willingly Take The Veil, Thinking Ourselves Freed By It. Make-up Is No More Optional For Us Than The Veil Is For Arab Women: It Is Our Western Version Of The Chador.

A Wet Dream In The Mind Of New York.

I Believe That There's A Force Of Life In The Universe, And That When We're Writing Or Making Music Or Painting, We're Likely To Connect With That Flow.

No One Ever Found Wisdom Without Also Being A Fool. Writers, Alas, Have To Be Fools In Public, While The Rest Of The Human Race Can Cover Its Tracks.

Love Is Love, But Marriage Is An Investment.

I Started With Poetry Because It Was Direct, Immediate, And Short. It Was The Ecstasy Of Striking Matches In The Dark.

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

You Don't Get To Choose What You Get Famous For And You Don't Get To Control Which Of Your Life's Many Struggles Gets To Stand For You.

Art Is Not Advocacy And Advocacy Is Not Art.

I Can Live Without It All - Love With Its Blood Pump, Sex With Its Messy Hungers, Men With Their Peacock Strutting, Their Silly Sexual Baggage, Their Wet Tongues In My Ear.

Why Do Analysts Always Answer A Question With A Question?

Love Is Everything It's Cracked Up To Be

We Don't Have A Clear Path Forward, And That's Been The Case For Feminism Since The 18th Century, When The Idea Of The Rights Of Women Actually Began.

Is A Currency Worth Anything If No One Wants It? We Used To Buy Shoes In Italy. Remember?

Blaming Women Is Always In Fashion.

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.

It's Only When You're Forbidden To Talk About The Future That You Suddenly Realize How Much The Future Normally Occupies The Present.

Is Perception Equivalent To Existence?

Art Is Always An Energy Exchange.

If, Every Day, I Dare To Remember That I Am Here On Loan, That This House, This Hillside, These Minutes Are All Leased To Me, Not Given, I Will Never Despair.

My Mother Wanted Me To Be Her Wings, To Fly As She Never Quite Had The Courage To Do. I Love Her For That. I Love The Fact That She Wanted To Give Birth To Her Own Wings.

In Loving Life You Love What Can't Survive.

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.

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.

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