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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.
-Erica Jong
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I Think We’re [men

Erica Jong
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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.

Understanding the Quote: "i think we’re [men and women] more similar. in that we all..."

This quote by Erica Jong reflects deeply on the theme of reality. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Reality, Fantasy, Sometimes, 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 reality and fantasy. 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.

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Topic
Reality
Fantasy
Sometimes
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Famous People Complain About Fame, But They Never Want To Give It Back, Myself Included.
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Every Time I Catch Myself Saying, "oh No, You Shouldn't Try That," I Think, "yes, I Should."
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Should
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.
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What I Would Like To Give My Daughter Is Freedom. And This Is Something That Must Be Given By Example, Not Exhortation. Freedom Is A Loose Leash, License To Be Different From Your Mother And Still Be Loved...freedom Is...not Insisting That Your Daughter Share Your Limitations. Freedom Also Means Letting Your Daughter Reject You When She Needs To And Come Back When She Needs To. Freedom Is Unconditional Love.
Daughter
Mother
Mean
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.
Hurt
Husband
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
Fear Is A Sign-usually A Sign That I'm Doing Something Right.
I'm Very Dependant. I Fall Apart Regularly.
Fall
Falling Apart
Women Who Bear Children Before They Establish Serious Habits Of Work, May Never Establish Them At All.
Children
Women
May
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
Few Women See Power As An End In Itself. The Point Of Power Is The Freedom To Cultivate Roses.
Power
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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.
Art
Expression
Diverse Society
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.
Art
Book
Writing
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
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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
Wife
Advice
Wish
Writers Are Doubters, Compulsives, Self-flagellants. The Torture Only Stops For Brief Moments.
Self
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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.
Criticism
World
Made
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.
Forever
Blame Someone
May
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.
Vienna
Six
Married
The Only People Worth Writing About Are Those About Whom The Last Word Cannot Be Said.
Writing
People
Lasts
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.
Home
Writing
Reality
The Body Is Wiser Than Its Inhabitants. The Body Is The Soul. The Body Is God’s Messenger.
Soul
Mind
Body
Perhaps Every Generation Thinks Of Itself As A Lost Generation And Perhaps Every Generation Is Right.
Thinking
Generations
Lost
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
Allow Me To Put The Record Straight. I Am Forty-six And Have Been For Some Years Past.
Funny
Witty
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The Lives Of Great Men Are More Oft' At Variance With Their Profess'd Phillosophies Than Consistent With 'em.
Men
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A New Dog Never Replaces An Old Dog, It Merely Expands The Heart.
Dog
Heart
Pet Loss
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.
Believe
Reading
People
Conflict Is The Soul Of Literature.
Soul
Literature
Conflict
Each Day That I Don't Write I Get More Fragmented.
Writing
Each Day
Fragmented
It Was The Old Psychosomatic Side-step. Everyone In My Family Dances It At Every Opportunity. You've Given Me A Splitting Headache! You've Given Me Indigestion! You've Given Me Crotch Rot! You've Given Me Auditory Hallucinations! You've Given Me A Heart Attack! You've Given Me Cancer!
Family
Cancer
Heart
My Generation Of Young Female Writers Discovered That We Could Dictate The Form And Content Of Our Own Fiction.
Female Writers
Generations
Fiction
It's Hard To Do Fiction And Nonfiction Simultaneously.
Fiction
Fiction And Nonfiction
Nonfiction
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
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Men And Women, Women And Men. It Will Never Work.
Relationship
Women
Men
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
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A Baby's A Full Time Job For Three Adults. Nobody Tells You That When You're Pregnant, Or You'd Probably Jump Off A Bridge. Nobody Tells You How All-consuming It Is To Be A Mother-how Reading Goes Out The Window And Thinking Too.
Mother
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At Times It Is Strangely Sedative To Know The Extent Of Your Own Powerlessness.
Knows
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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.
Fate
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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
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?
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If You Apologize For Something That Isn't Your Fault In The First Place, You, In Effect, Confirm Their Belief That It Is Your Fault.
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Surviving Means Being Born Over And Over.
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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.
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Sometimes It Was Worth All The Disadvantages Of Marriage Just To Have That: One Friend In An Indifferent World.
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How Could One Create Life With Someone Who Represented Death?
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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.
Inspirational
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Courage
All People Believe Their Suffering Is Greater Than Others.
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The Soul Is Awakened Through Service.
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It Takes A Spasm Of Love To Write A Poem.
Writing
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.
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Men
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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.
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A Book Burrows Into Your Life In A Very Profound Way Because The Experience Of Reading Is Not Passive.
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I Never Became A Writer For The Money. I Am A Poet First. Even Getting Published Is A Miracle For Poets.
Miracle
Firsts
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Writers Are Always At The Edge Of The Inferno, And The Fire Is Licking At Our Toes. Luckily, This Turns Us On!
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Licking
Toes
Harriet Van Horne He Makes Love To Me Expertly, Mechanically, Coldly... He's Pressing All My Buttons, As If I Were A Pocket Calculator.
Making Love
Buttons
Pockets
Writers Tend To Be Addicted To Houses ... We Work At Home, Indulging The Agoraphobia Endemic To Our Kind. We Are Immersed In Our Surroundings To An Almost Morbid Degree.
Home
House
Degrees
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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Comforting
Atheism
Flesh Is Merely A Lesson. We Learn It & Pass On.
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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
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Talking
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.
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It Is The City Of Mirrors, The City Of Mirages, At Once Solid And Liquid, At Once Air And Stone.
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The Worst Thing About Jealousy Is How Low It Makes You Reach.
Inspirational
Lows
Worst
I Think I've Become More Cynical About Sex. Meaning, I Don't Think Sex In And Of Itself Leads To An Epiphany.
Sex
Thinking
Cynical
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.
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Two
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Art Keeps One Young, I Think, Because It Keeps One Perpetually A Beginner, Perpetually A Child.
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Thinking
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
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Back In The Days When Men Were Hunters And Chest Beaters And Women Spent Their Whole Lives Worrying About Pregnancy Or Dying In Childbirth, They Often Had To Be Taken Against Their Will. Men Complained That Women Were Cold, Unresponsive, Frigid... They Wanted Their Women Wanton. They Wanted Their Women Wild. Now Women Were Finally Learning To Be Wanton And Wild - And What Happened? The Men Wilted.
Women
Pregnancy
Taken
Plot Is Just A Fancy Way Of Saying 'and Then.
Plot
Fancy
Way
Ambivalence Is A Wonderful Tune To Dance To. It Has A Rhythm All Its Own.
Inspirational
Dance
Tunes
Venice Is Ever The Fragile Labyrinth At The Edge Of The Sea And It Reminds Us How Brief And Perilous The Journeys Of Our Lives Are; Perhaps That Is Why We Love It So. City Of Plagues And Brief Liaisons, City Of Lingering Deaths And Incendiary Loves, City Of Chimeras, Nightmares, Pigeons, Bells. You Are The Only City In The World Whose Dialect Has A Word For The Shimmer Of Canal Water Reflected On The Ceiling Of A Room.
Journey
Sea
Cities
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.
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Stars
Powerful
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.
Men
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Needs
Once I Worshipped Keats For Dying Young. Now I Think It's Braver To Die Old.
Thinking
Dying
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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.
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Despair
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I Have Not Ceased Being Fearful, But I Have Ceased To Let Fear Control Me.
Fear
Fear And Courage
Fearful
Really True Intimacy Is Rare And It Depends On Other Things Besides Sex.
Sex
Intimacy
True Intimacy
My Generation Had Doris Day As A Role Model, Then Gloria Steinem--then Princess Diana. We Are The Most Confused Generation.
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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.
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Television
I Believe I Belong To The Last Literary Generation, The Last Generation, That Is, For Whom Books Are A Religion.
Believe
Book
Lasts
The Trick Is Not How Much Pain You Feel - But How Much Joy You Feel
Love
Pain
Joy
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.
Love
Sex
Silly
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.
Men
Want
Bed
Women Are Not The Richer Sex. Women Are Not Equal In Society.
Sex
Equal
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 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 Lost More Men To Homosexuality Than We Ever Did In Two World Wars.
War
Men
Two
We Are Finally Driven To Monogamy Not By Morality But By Exhaustion.
Cynical
Morality
Monogamy
What I Would Like To Give My Daughter Is Freedom. And This Is Something That Must Be Given By Example, Not By Exhortation.
Daughter
Freedom
Giving
Each One An Antidote To The One That Went Before. Each One A Reaction, An About-face, A Rebound.
Faces
Rebound
Reactions
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
Having Stopped Expecting Truth, We Rarely Get It.
Truth
Expecting
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.
Important
Way
Force
Anger Is Really Disappointed Hope.
Inspirational
Anger
Disappointed
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.
Culture
World
Way
Souls Have Neither Sex Nor Colour.
Sex
Soul
Colour
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.
Depressing
Fighting
Winning
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.
Communication
Thinking
Evil
Feminism Is Teaching. I've Gotten A Lot Of Pleasure Pushing Younger Writers That I've Met And Worked With.
Teaching
Feminism
Pushing
Though My Friends Envied Me Because I Always Seemed So Cheerful And Confident, I Was Secretly Terrified Of Practically Everything.
Cheerful
Terrified
Envied
That Was Probably The Mistake Of My Generation, That We Thought That Having Sex With Anyone Would Be Intimate And It Wasn't.
Sex
Mistake
Would Be
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.
People
Scared
Get Real
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
Blaming Women Is Always In Fashion.
Fashion
Women
Blame
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.
Sex
Giving Up
Air
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
There Is Still The Feeling That Women's Writing Is A Lesser Class Of Writing, That What Goes On In The Nursery Or The Bedroom Is Not As Important As What Goes On In The Battlefield, That What Women Know About Is A Less Category Of Knowledge.
Writing
Class
Feelings
Sex Just As A Drive, As A Hormonal Drive, Is Not Very Interesting.
Sex
Interesting
Very Interesting
Being A Daughter Is Only Half The Equation; Bearing One Is The Other.
Daughter
Half
Equations
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
All My Forebears Worked For A Living. My Grandfather Painted Portraits. My Mother Too. My Aunt Painted Seascapes.
Mother
Aunt
Grandfather
Divorce Is My Generation's Coming Of Age Ceremony - A Ritual Scarring That Makes Anything That Happens Afterward Seem Bearable.
Divorce
Age
Generations
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.
Girl
Mother
Art
You Must Find The Right Voice (or Voices) For The Timbre That Can Convince A Reader To Give Himself Up To You.
Writing
Voice
Giving
Nothing You Write Is Ever Lost To You. At Some Other Level Your Mind Is Working On It.
Writing
Mind
Levels
Always Do The Things You Fear The Most. Courage Is An Acquired Taste, Like Caviar.
Caviar
Taste
Acquired Taste
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.
Lonely
Writing
Order
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
I Have A Very Sensitive Nose. I Identify With Dogs. I Understand The World Through My Nose.
Dog
Noses
World
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.
Writing
Cynical
Truth Is
Memory Is The Most Transient Of All Possessions. And When It Goes, It Leaves As Few Traces As Stars That Have Disappeared.
Stars
Memories
Possession
Women Are The Only Exploited Group In History To Have Been Idealized Into Powerlessness.
Women
Equality
Sisterhood
Pregnancy Seemed Like A Tremendous Abdication Of Control. Something Growing Inside You Which Would Eventually Usurp Your Life.
Pregnancy
Growing
Abdication
What Makes A Man Love Death, Fanny? Is It Because He Hopes To Avert His Own By Watchin' The Deaths Of Others? Doth He Hope To Devour Death By Devourin' Executions With His Eyes? I'll Ne'er Understand It, If I Live To Be Eight Hundred Years. The Human Beast Is More Beast Than Human, 'tis True.
Eye
Men
Eight
The Words Carry Their Own Momentum. A Confession In Motion Tends To Stay In Motion. Newton's First Law Of Jealousy.
Law
Momentum
Firsts
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 Think Professionalism Is Important, And Professionalism Means You Get Paid.
Mean
Thinking
Important
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
Is There No Villain In This World Who Doth Not Regard Himself As A Poor Abus'd Innocent, No She-wolf Who Doth Not Think Herself A Lamb, No Shark Who Doth Not Fancy That She Is A Goldfish?
Thinking
Sharks
Fancy
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
Poetry Is The Language We Speak In The Most Terrifying Or Ecstatic Passages Of Our Lives. But The Very Word Poetry Scares People. They Think Of Their Grade School Teachers Reciting 'hiawatha' And They Groan.
Teacher
School
Thinking
The Most Important Thing For A Writer Is To Be Locked In A Study.
Important
Study
Locked
Young People Never Believe In The Possibility Of Their Own Deaths. That's One Reason Old Men Can Send Them To War.
War
Believe
Men
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
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
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
A Wet Dream In The Mind Of New York.
Dream
New York
California
When I Met My Husband, I Refused To Invite Him Home For Passover Because I Was Embarrassed My Mother Might Serve All The Catered Dishes In The Wrong Order.
Mother
Husband
Home
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
If You've Been A Pretty Woman And Always Pursued By Lovers, Losing That And Not Having That - It Feels Like A Great Loss.
Loss
Pretty Woman
Losing
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
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.
War
Practice
People
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
Photographs Are The Most Curious Indicators Of Reality.
Reality
Photograph
Curious
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
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
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
Birth Is The Start Of Loneliness And Loneliness The Start Of Poetry.
Loneliness
Birth
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
Perhaps It Is Because Venice Is Both Liquid And Solid, Both Air And Stone, That It Somehow Combines All The Elements Crucial To Make Our Imaginations Ignite And Turn Fantasies Into Realities.
Reality
Air
Venice
Gossip Is The Opiate Of The Oppressed.
Reality
Envy
Gossip
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
To Name Oneself Is The First Act Of Both The Poet And The Revolutionary.
Names
Firsts
Revolutionary
We All Carry The Houses Of Our Youth Inside, And Our Parents, Too, Grown Small Enough To Fit Within Our Hearts.
Family
Home
Heart
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.
Believe
Men
Views
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
Writing Is One Of The Few Professions Left Where You Take All The Responsibility For What You Do. It's Really Dangerous And Ultimately Destroys You As A Writer If You Start Thinking About Responses To Your Work Or What Your Audience Needs.
Writing
Responsibility
Thinking
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
Language Matters Because Whoever Controls The Words Controls The Conversation, Because Whoever Controls The Conversation Controls Its Outcome, Because Whoever Frames The Debate Has Already Won It, Because Telling The Truth Has Become Harder And Harder To Achieve In An America Drowning In Orwellian Newspeak.
America
Outcomes
Matter
I Think A Lot Of People, When They Read About A Woman Who Acknowledges Her Sexuality And Her Feelings, Get Really Scared. They Say They Want To Be Fearless, But In Reality They're Terrified. If They Acknowledge Their Deepest Feelings, They Might Have To Change Their Lives.
Thinking
Reality
People
Images Are ... A Kind Of Emotional Shorthand.
Emotional
Kind
Shorthand
People In The Land Of Lala Look Like Expensive Wax Fruit. And They Work Hard To Achieve That Look.
Hard Work
Land
People
Silence Is The Bluntest Of Blunt Instruments.
Silence
Blunt
Instruments
I Don't Think That Sex Necessarily Produces Intimacy.
Sex
Thinking
Intimacy
Pleasure Is Terrifying Because It Breaks Down The Boundaries Between People. Embracing Passion Means Living With Fear.
Sex
Mean
Passion
A Poem (surely Someone Has Said This Before) Is A One-night Stand, A Short Story A Love Affair, And A Novel A Marriage.
Night
Stories
Literature
Is There A Phrase In The English Language More Fraught With Menace Than A Tax Audit?
Phrases
Language
Menace
Biography Is Essentially A Collaborative Art, The Latest Biographer Collaborating With All Those Who Wrote Earlier.
Art
Biographies
Biographers
Betrayal Betrays The Betrayer.
Betrayal
Betrayed
Betray
Sex Has The Unparalleled Power To Make Us Absurd To Ourselves. It Also Has The Power To Make Us Understand Transcendence.
Sex
Absurd
Transcendence
We Write Poems / As Leaves Give Oxygen - / So We Can Breathe.
Writing
Oxygen
Giving
Poems, Like Dreams, Are A Sort Of Royal Road To The Unconscious. They Tell You What Your Secret Self Cannot Express.
Dream
Self
Secret
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.
Loyalty
Dog
Heart
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
Most Sex Is Not Really Intimate.
Sex
Intimate
You Must Have A Certain Amount Of Maturity To Be A Poet. Seldom Do Sixteen-year-olds Know Themselves Well Enough.
Maturity
Years
Sixteen
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.
Art
Play
Perfection
Spring, / You Are A Pinking Shears: You Cut / Fresh Edges On The World.
Spring
Cutting
World
I Look Forward And See Myself Look Back.
Looks
When Everyone Thinks They Know You, It's Hard Not To Be Guarded.
Thinking
Guarded
Knows
Writing About Sex Turns Out To Be Just Writing About Life.
Sex
Writing
Turns
Driving Me Away Is Easier Than Saying Goodbye.
Goodbye
Farewell
Over You
The Truth Is Simple, You Do Not Die From Love. You Only Wish You Did.
Funny
Love You
Sarcasm
A Soul Is Partly Given, Partly Wrought; Remember Always That You Are The Maker Of Your Own Soul.
Soul
Remember
Makers
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
Jealousy Is All The Fun You Think They Had.
Inspirational
Jealousy
Fun
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.
Real
Book
World
My Grandchildren Are Fabulous And Funny.
Funny
Grandchildren
Fabulous
What Was The Point Of Spending Your Life With Someone You Were Always Looking For Ways To Decieve?
Way
Spending
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
I've Become More Conservative About Sex As I've Gotten Older.
Sex
Conservative
Is There Not An Arabick Proverb Which Goes, 'no One Throws Stones At A Barren Tree'?
Jealousy
Envy
Tree
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
O What Is It About Having One's Own Babe Upon One's Hip That Makes A Woman Wish To Go Home To Her Mother? A Desire To Say: 'look, The Circle Is Compleat'? A Desire To Say: 'look, I Have Cross'd The Divide And Now Am More Like You'? A Desire To Say: 'look, This Babe I Offer You Is My Most Precious Gift'?
Mother
Home
Circles
Critics Write Out Of Intellectual Exercise, Not Poets. Poets Write Straight From The Heart.
Writing
Heart
Exercise
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
Where Is Hollywood Located? Chiefly Between The Ears. In That Part Of The American Brain Lately Vacated By God.
Funny
God
California
You Should Write First Drafts As If They Will Never Be Shown To Anyone.
Writing
Firsts
Should
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
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