Background Image
...
Harriet Van Horne He Makes Love To Me Expertly, Mechanically, Coldly... He's Pressing All My Buttons, As If I Were A Pocket Calculator.
-Erica Jong
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

Harriet Van Horne He

Erica Jong
...
Harriet Van Horne He Makes Love To Me Expertly, Mechanically, Coldly... He's Pressing All My Buttons, As If I Were A Pocket Calculator.

Understanding the Quote: "harriet van horne he makes love to me expertly, mechanically, coldly... he's..."

This quote by Erica Jong reflects deeply on the theme of making love. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Making Love, Buttons, Pockets, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Erica Jong interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Erica Jong

Erica Jong is celebrated for insightful thoughts on making love and buttons. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 6
Topic
Making Love
Buttons
Pockets
More From Erica Jong
I Want You. I Want You. I Want You. Anything To Avoid Saying: I Love You.
Love You
Want
Say I Love You
Love Is Love, But Marriage Is An Investment.
Love Is
Investment
My Generation Of Young Female Writers Discovered That We Could Dictate The Form And Content Of Our Own Fiction.
Female Writers
Generations
Fiction
Everyone Has Talent. What Is Rare Is The Courage To Follow The Talent To The Dark Place Where It Leads.
Inspirational
Life
Success
Home Is Where Your Books Are.
Book
Home
Often I Find That Poems Predict What I'm Going To Do Later In My Own Writing, And Often I Find That Poems Predict My Life. So I Think Poetry Is The Most Intense Expression Of Feeling That We Have.
Writing
Thinking
Expression
Having Stopped Expecting Truth, We Rarely Get It.
Truth
Expecting
The Soul Is Awakened Through Service.
Life
Spiritual
Soul
In Loving Life You Love What Can't Survive.
Loving Life
Photographs Are The Most Curious Indicators Of Reality.
Reality
Photograph
Curious
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.
Fun
Men
Perfect
Really True Intimacy Is Rare And It Depends On Other Things Besides Sex.
Sex
Intimacy
True Intimacy
Take Your Life In Your Own Hands, And What Happens? A Terrible Thing: No One To Blame.
Inspirational
Life
Motivational
The Words Carry Their Own Momentum. A Confession In Motion Tends To Stay In Motion. Newton's First Law Of Jealousy.
Law
Momentum
Firsts
I Don't Think That Sex Necessarily Produces Intimacy.
Sex
Thinking
Intimacy
This Is The Sad Bed Of Chosen Chastity Because You Are Miles And Mountains Away.
Long Distance Relationship
Mountain
Bed
Is A Currency Worth Anything If No One Wants It? We Used To Buy Shoes In Italy. Remember?
Shoes
Want
Remember
It Takes Courage To Lead A Life. Any Life.
Adventure
Perhaps Every Generation Thinks Of Itself As A Lost Generation And Perhaps Every Generation Is Right.
Thinking
Generations
Lost
You Must Have A Certain Amount Of Maturity To Be A Poet. Seldom Do Sixteen-year-olds Know Themselves Well Enough.
Maturity
Years
Sixteen
Advice Is What We Ask For When We Already Know The Answer But Wish We Didn't.
Funny
Being Strong
Spiritual
Of All The Foolish Fears Of Humankind, Fear Of The Future Is By Far The Most Foolish.
Fear
Future
Foolish
In Any Triangle, Who Is The Betrayer, Who The Unseen Rival, And Who The Humiliated Lover? Oneself, Oneself, And No One But Oneself!
Infidelity
Unseen
Triangles
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.
Responsibility
Grandparent
Chinese
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.
Writing
Thinking
Who I Am
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?
Art
Media
Selling Things
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!
Love
Song
Good Life
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.
Photography
Cameras
Narrative
I Didn't Believe In Systems. Everything Human Was Imperfect And Ultimately Absurd. What Did I Believe In Then? In Humor. In Laughing At Systems, At People, At One's Self. In Laughing Even At One's Need To Laugh All The Time. In Seeing Life As Contradictory, Many-sided, Various, Funny, Tragic, And With Moments Of Outrageous Beauty. In Seeing Life As A Fruitcake, Including Delicious Plums And Bad Peanuts, But Meant To Be Devoured Hungrily All The Same Because You Couldn't Feast On The Plums Without Also Sometimes Being Poisoned By The Peanuts.
Believe
Self
Laughing
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.
Hurt
Believe
People
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.
Independent
Thinking
Government
Underneath It All, You Longed To Be Annihilated By Love.
There Is This Tendency To Think That If You Could Only Find The Magic Way, Then You Could Become A Poet. "tell Me How To Become A Poet. Tell Me What To Do." . . . What Makes You A Poet Is A Gift For Language, An Ability To See Into The Heart Of Things, And An Ability To Deal With Important Unconscious Material. When All These Things Come Together, You're A Poet. But There Isn't One Little Gimmick That Makes You A Poet. There Isn't Any Formula For It.
Heart
Thinking
Magic
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.
Believe
Fog
Cities
Many, Many People Have Done A Lot More Sexual Experimentation Than I Have.
People
Done
Experimentation
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.
Baby
Falling In Love
Emotional
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.
Sweet
Sex
Real
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.
Book
Fall
Reading
Because I Loved Myself, I Was Loved.
The Problem With Feminism In The Second Wave Was That We Fought So Much Among Ourselves, And I Think We Did So Much Damage To The Movement... And I Think The Next Wave, The Third Wave, Is Women Mentoring Younger Women And Women Helping Younger Women To Enter The Political Process And The Writing World.
Writing
Thinking
Political
What Was The Point Of Spending Your Life With Someone You Were Always Looking For Ways To Decieve?
Way
Spending
I Thought Of The Nameless Inventor Of The Bathtub. I Was Somehow Sure It Was A Woman. And Was The Inventor Of The Bathtub Plug A Man?
Men
Invention
Plugs
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.
Sex
Creativity
Voice
It Is The City Of Mirrors, The City Of Mirages, At Once Solid And Liquid, At Once Air And Stone.
Mirrors
Air
Cities
Women Are Their Own Worst Enemies. And Guilt Is The Main Weapon Of Self-torture . . . Show Me A Woman Who Doesn't Feel Guilty And I'll Show You A Man.
Men
Worst Enemy
Self
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.
Children
Men
News
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.
Friendship
Bad Relationship
Talking
The Hardest Part Is Believing In Yourself At The Notebook Stage. It Is Like Believing In Dreams In The Morning.
Notebook
Dream
Morning
Eating Is Never So Simple As Hunger.
Simple
Hunger
Eating
I Am Not Sure If Love Is A Salve Or Just A Deeper Kind Of Wound.
Love Is
Kind
Not Sure
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.
Hurt
Loss
Gains
Beware Of The Man Who Praises Women's Liberation; He Is About To Quit His Job.
Jobs
Work
Women
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.
Morning
Anxiety
Next
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.
Home
Learning
Men
Hate Generalizes; Love Is Particular.
Love
Life
Hate
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.
Thinking
Ideas
Flying
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.
Book
Hands
People
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.
Cat
Stones
Ghost
Writers Do Not Choose Their Subjects; Their Subjects Choose Them.
Subjects
Don't Ye Know That Ev'ry Soul On Earth Feels Itself To Be An Orphan?
Soul
Earth
Orphan
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.
Writing
Mean
Emotional
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.
Thinking
Race
Track
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.
Writing
Thinking
Fiction
Ambivalence Is A Wonderful Tune To Dance To. It Has A Rhythm All Its Own.
Inspirational
Dance
Tunes
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.
Believe
Comforting
Might
A Concern With 'public Morality' Is - If Not The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel - The First Foray Of The Fascist.
Lasts
Firsts
Morality
Is There Not An Arabick Proverb Which Goes, 'no One Throws Stones At A Barren Tree'?
Jealousy
Envy
Tree
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.
Fall
Sleep
Wish
Most Sex Is Not Really Intimate.
Sex
Intimate
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.
Art
Expression
Diverse Society
I'm Very Dependant. I Fall Apart Regularly.
Fall
Falling Apart
Art Is Not Advocacy And Advocacy Is Not Art.
Art
Activism
Advocacy
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.
Thinking
Self
Vegetables
Spring, / You Are A Pinking Shears: You Cut / Fresh Edges On The World.
Spring
Cutting
World
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.
Attitude
Thinking
Ideas
I Am Old Enough To Know That Laughter, Not Anger, Is The True Revelation.
Laughter
Enough
Revelations
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.
Love And Death
Paradox
Love Poetry
We Write As If Our Lives Depended Upon It. They Do.
Writing
Our Lives
Ifs
She Was Mine And Not-mine All At Once. She Was The Most Beautiful Thing I Had Ever Seen And The Most Terrifying.
Beautiful
Birth
Beautiful Things
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.
Children
Ideas
People
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.
Writing
Silence
Despair
Venice, That Capital City Of Dream And Intrigue, That Double City (one Above And Seemingly Solid, One Below, Wavering And Reflected In The Waters), Which Never Disappoints.
Dream
Cities
Venice
Women Who Bear Children Before They Establish Serious Habits Of Work, May Never Establish Them At All.
Children
Women
May
Each One An Antidote To The One That Went Before. Each One A Reaction, An About-face, A Rebound.
Faces
Rebound
Reactions
It Is The Nature Of Those Books We Call Classics To Wait Patiently On The Shelf For Us To Grow Into Them.
Book
Waiting
Shelves
In A World Where Women Work Three Times As Hard For Half As Much, Our Achievement Has Been Denigrated, Both Marriage And Divorce Have Turned Against Us, Our Motherhood Has Been Used As An Obstacle To Our Success, Our Passion As A Trap, Our Empathy For Others As An Excuse To Underpay Us.
Passion
Divorce
Motherhood
Divorce Is My Generation's Coming Of Age Ceremony - A Ritual Scarring That Makes Anything That Happens Afterward Seem Bearable.
Divorce
Age
Generations
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.
Daughter
Mother
Wings
As Long As I'm Facing The Right Direction, It Doesn't Matter The Size Of My Steps.
Long
Steps
Matter
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?
Jobs
Parent
Different
Love Gives Without Taking
Sweet
Romantic Love
Giving
I've Become More Conservative About Sex As I've Gotten Older.
Sex
Conservative
There Are No Atheists On Turbulent Airplanes.
Atheist
Airplane
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.
Beautiful
Stars
Powerful
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.
Struggle
Fame
Without The Gods, How Would I Sing?' I Asked. With Your Own Voice,' He Said.
Inspirational
Atheist
Voice
Fear Is A Sign-usually A Sign That I'm 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.
Hate
Hands
People
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.
Country
Falling In Love
Crazy
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.
Years
Air
Looks
Gossip Is The Opiate Of The Oppressed.
Reality
Envy
Gossip
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.
Atheist
Comforting
Atheism
I See That The Greatest Thing About Getting Older Is How Your Judgment Changes And How You Come To Understand The Cycles Of Life. And You Keep Having These Amazing Flashes Of Understanding.
Cycle Of Life
Understanding
Getting Older
The Most Important Education You Get Is Your Own - The One You Learn In Solitude.
Meditation
Solitude
Important
Since Flesh Can't Stay, We Pass The Words Along.
Flesh
Love Is Everything It's Cracked Up To Be
Love
Love Is
Cracked
Sex Has The Unparalleled Power To Make Us Absurd To Ourselves. It Also Has The Power To Make Us Understand Transcendence.
Sex
Absurd
Transcendence
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.
Writing
Years
Finishing
A Dreary Censorship, And Self-censorship, Has Been Imposed On Books By The Centralization Of The Book Industry.
Book
Self
Censorship
Court, In Our Society, Is Often The Last Resort Of Stubbornness.
Law
Our Society
Lasts
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.
Book
Writing
Men
Any System Was A Straightjacket If You Insisted On Adhering To It So Totally And Humorlessly.
Ifs
The Most Important Thing For A Writer Is To Be Locked In A Study.
Important
Study
Locked
I Convinced Myself That Sadness And Compromise Were The Ways Of The World.
Sadness
World
Way
Writing About Sex Turns Out To Be Just Writing About Life.
Sex
Writing
Turns
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.
Confidence
People
Encounters
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.
Writing
Diaries
Boring
[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.
Real
Writing
People
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.
Moving
Careers
Dying
Pain Is Not Love. Love Flowers; Love Gives Without Taking; Love Is Serene And Calm.
Pain
Flower
Love Is
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.
Writing
Males
Fiction
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.
Prayer
War
Hate
Sex Doesn't Disappear, It Just Changes Forms.
Sex
Disappear
Form
Each Day That I Don't Write I Get More Fragmented.
Writing
Each Day
Fragmented
It's Only When You're Forbidden To Talk About The Future That You Suddenly Realize How Much The Future Normally Occupies The Present.
Realizing
Forbidden
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.
People
Feminism
Want
Images Are ... A Kind Of Emotional Shorthand.
Emotional
Kind
Shorthand
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.
People
Funeral
Insane
I Mostly Hate Organized Religion, Which I Think Is A Force For The Oppression Of Women And Creates Warfare.
Hate
Thinking
Warfare
I Never Became A Writer For The Money. I Am A Poet First. Even Getting Published Is A Miracle For Poets.
Miracle
Firsts
Poet
I Stand In The Mist And Cry, Thinking Of Myself Standing In The Mist And Crying, And Wondering If I Will Ever Be Able To Use This Experience In A Book.
Book
Writing
Thinking
It Is For This, Partly, That I Write. How Can I Know What I Think Unless I See What I Write.
Writing
Thinking
Parting
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.
Needs
Made
Gift From God
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.
Love
Inspirational
Life
Sex Just As A Drive, As A Hormonal Drive, Is Not Very Interesting.
Sex
Interesting
Very Interesting
Once I Worshipped Keats For Dying Young. Now I Think It's Braver To Die Old.
Thinking
Dying
Young
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.
Sleep
People
Intimate
I'm Interested In What Happens To People When They Get Into That Publicity Machine. We Tend To Think Things Have Changed, But There's Still A Deep Sexism Underlying The Way Women Are Treated Publicly.
Thinking
People
Machines
Men Must Be Stripped Of Arrogance And Women Must Become Independent For Any Mutually Nurturing Alliance To Endure Between The Sexes.
Sex
Independent
Men
Surviving Means Being Born Over And Over.
Life
Mean
Born
To Name Oneself Is The First Act Of Both The Poet And The Revolutionary. When We Take Away The Right To An Individual Name, We Symbolically Take Away The Right To Be An Individual. Immigration Officials Did This To Refugees; Husbands Routinely Do It To Wives.
Husband
Names
Wife
Love Is Everything It's Cracked Up To Be. It Really Is Worth Fighting For, Being Brave For, Risking Everything For.
Love
Relationship
Marriage
A Book Burrows Into Your Life In A Very Profound Way Because The Experience Of Reading Is Not Passive.
Book
Reading
Profound
Turning Fifty ... Is Like Flying: Hours Of Boredom Punctuated By Moments Of Sheer Terror.
Boredom
Flying
Fifty
Murky Language Means Someone Wants To Pick Your Pocket.
Mean
Pockets
Want
... What Is Great Poetry, After All, But The Continuation Of The Human Voice After Death?
Voice
After Death
Great Poetry
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.
Country
Believe
Long Ago
We All Parent The Best We Can. Being Human, We're Ambivalent. We Want Perfection For Our Babies, But We Also Need Sleep.
Baby
Sleep
Perfection
Show Me A Woman Who Doesn't Feel Guilty And I'll Show You A Man.
Witty
Powerful
Women
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.
Inspirational
Birthday
Fire
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.
Marriage
Broken Heart
Divorce
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.
People
Want
Firsts
I Prefer To Work In The Morning. I Get Up Now At Five In The Morning. In The Morning Is When I Feel Freshest.
Morning
Get Up
Feels
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.
Men
Pheromones
Weight
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.
Character
Writing
Thinking
Tis True That Tho' People Can Transcend Their Characters In Times Of Tranquillity, They Can Ne'er Do So In Times Of Tumult.
Character
People
Tranquillity
You See A Lot Of Smart Guys With Dumb Women, But You Hardly Ever See A Smart Woman With A Dumb Guy.
Love
Witty
Women
Plot Is Just A Fancy Way Of Saying 'and Then.
Plot
Fancy
Way
The Unconscious Of An Artist Is Her Greatest Treasure. It Is What Transmutes The Dross Of Autobiography Into The Gold Of Myth.
Artist
Greatest Treasure
Gold
Anger Is Really Disappointed Hope.
Inspirational
Anger
Disappointed
We Were Not Human Beings Going Through Spiritual Experiences; We Were Spiritual Beings Going Through Human Experiences, In Order To Grow.
Spiritual
Order
Human Experience
Women Are Not The Richer Sex. Women Are Not Equal In Society.
Sex
Equal
Compose With Utter Freedom And Edit With Utter Discipline.
Discipline
Edits
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.
Thinking
Shopping
America
Never Follow A Dog Act. You Know You're On The Skids When You Play Yourself In The Movie Version Of Your Life.
Dog
Play
Knows
My Grandchildren Are Fabulous And Funny.
Funny
Grandchildren
Fabulous
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.
Years
Two
White
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.
Rights
Ideas
Feminism
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.
Hurt
Writing
Rooms
The Older We Get, The More Jewish We Become In My Family.
My Family
Silence Is The Bluntest Of Blunt Instruments. It Seems To Hammer You Into The Ground. It Drives You Deeper And Deeper Into Your Own Guilt. It Makes The Voices Inside Your Head Accuse You More Viciously Than Any Outside Voices Ever Could.
Voice
Silence
Guilt
You Can't Be Creative And Still Be A Good Girl.
Girl
Creative
Stills
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.
Feminist
Feminism
Males
Birth Is The Start Of Loneliness And Loneliness The Start Of Poetry.
Loneliness
Birth
Though My Friends Envied Me Because I Always Seemed So Cheerful And Confident, I Was Secretly Terrified Of Practically Everything.
Cheerful
Terrified
Envied
Famous People Complain About Fame, But They Never Want To Give It Back, Myself Included.
People
Giving
Complaining
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.
Writing
Past
Thinking
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.
Distance
Book
Writing
Isn't That The Problem? That Women Have Been Swindled For Centuries Into Substituting Adornment For Love, Fashion (as It Were) For Passion?
Fashion
Passion
Feminist
How Could One Create Life With Someone Who Represented Death?
Whenever I Go Anywhere But Italy For A Vacation, I Always Feel Vaguely Disappointed, As If I Have Made A Mistake.
Mistake
Vacation
Made
Courage Is The Only Magic Worth Having.
Courage
Magic
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.
Daughter
Mother
Spiritual
Unhappiness Is Our Element. We Come To Believe We Can't Function Without It.
Believe
Elements
Unhappiness
I Don't Cook. My Mother Didn't Cook. My Daughter Doesn't Cook.
Daughter
Mother
My Daughter
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.
Love
Beauty
Apology
Jealousy Is All The Fun You Think They Had.
Inspirational
Jealousy
Fun
When You Start Having Lunch And Actually Eating, It's Already Over.
Love
Lunch
Eating
When I Sit Down At My Writing Desk, Time Seems To Vanish. I Think It's A Wonderful Way To Spend One's Life.
Writing
Thinking
Way
I Have A Very Sensitive Nose. I Identify With Dogs. I Understand The World Through My Nose.
Dog
Noses
World
Singularity Shows Something Wrong In The Mind.
Mind
Adaptability
Shows
I Believe That Women Should Live For Love, For Motherhood And For Intellect, And I Believe We Shouldn't Have To Choose. And I Believe That's Always Been Difficult For Women, To Express Themselves Intellectually, Maternally, And Passionately.
Believe
Motherhood
Should
Language Can't Be Appropriated By One Person, One Poet. The Words Belong To All Of Us.
Language
Poet
Persons
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.
Peace
Men
Selfishness
Women Are The Only Exploited Group In History To Have Been Idealized Into Powerlessness.
Women
Equality
Sisterhood
I Don't Necessarily Read Everything. I Read What I Need To Read To Inspire The Book I'm Trying To Finish.
Book
Inspire
Trying
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.
Dream
Men
Independence
I Think Professionalism Is Important, And Professionalism Means You Get Paid.
Mean
Thinking
Important
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.
Honesty
Nice
Writing
The Worst Thing About Jealousy Is How Low It Makes You Reach.
Inspirational
Lows
Worst
Trending Author
Roberto Cavalli
Tiffeny Milbrett
Krist Novoselic
Taylor Momsen
Joan Baez
Linda Cardellini
Category
Information