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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.

-Erica Jong

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But If The Gods

Erica Jong

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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.

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Singularity Shows Something Wrong In The Mind.

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Human Experience

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Conflict Is The Soul Of Literature.

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

Compose With Utter Freedom And Edit With Utter Discipline.

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Blaming Women Is Always In Fashion.

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Driving Me Away Is Easier Than Saying Goodbye.

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Always Do The Things You Fear The Most. Courage Is An Acquired Taste, Like Caviar.

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

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.

What Was Time But A Convention, A Habit Of Mind, A Custom Of Dress?

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

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.

Keeping A Journal Implies Hope.

Keeping A Journal

People Are Terrified. A Lot Of Them Are In Relationships That Aren't Satisfying, And If You Tell Them They Can Change Their Life, They Get Really Scared.

Sex Doesn't Disappear, It Just Changes Forms.

I Don't Necessarily Read Everything. I Read What I Need To Read To Inspire The Book I'm Trying To Finish.

Hate Generalizes; Love Is Particular.

It Takes Courage To Lead A Life. Any Life.

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.

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

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

Why Do Analysts Always Answer A Question With A Question?

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

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

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.

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

Home Is Where Your Books Are.

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.

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

It's Hard To Do Fiction And Nonfiction Simultaneously.

Fiction And Nonfiction

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One Writes Not By Will But By Surrender.

Betrayal Betrays The Betrayer.

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Black And White

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Falling In Love

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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

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Experimentation

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

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Genius Is A Strong Aphrodisiac.

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There Are No Atheists On Turbulent Airplanes.

It Takes A Spasm Of Love To Write A Poem.

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.

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

Blocks Usually Stem From Fear Of Being Judged. If You Imagine The World Is Listening, You'll Never Write A Line.

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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.

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

The Bruise On The Heart Which At First Feels Incredibly Tender To The Slightest Touch Eventually Turns All The Shades Of The Rainbow And Stops Aching. We Forget About It. We Even Forget We Have Hearts Until The Next Time. And Then We Wonder How We Ever Could Have Forgotten. We Think This One Is Better, Because, In Fact, We Cannot Fully Remember The Time Before.

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

Famous People Complain About Fame, But They Never Want To Give It Back, Myself Included.

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Pleasure Is Terrifying Because It Breaks Down The Boundaries Between People. Embracing Passion Means Living With Fear.

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.

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

Procrastination

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Remembers Everything

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