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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.

-Erica Jong

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I Tried To Keep

Erica Jong

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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.

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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.

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

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Beautiful Things

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

Having Stopped Expecting Truth, We Rarely Get It.

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

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

I Don't Think That Sex Necessarily Produces Intimacy.

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

Betrayal Betrays The Betrayer.

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

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Sex Has The Unparalleled Power To Make Us Absurd To Ourselves. It Also Has The Power To Make Us Understand Transcendence.

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You Should Write First Drafts As If They Will Never Be Shown To Anyone.

My Grandchildren Are Fabulous And Funny.

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

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.

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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Bad Relationship

Hate Generalizes; Love Is Particular.

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.

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.

Why Does Life Need Evidence Of Life?

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.

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

I 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.

I Think Men Have Always Been Afraid Of Women's Sexuality, And The Restrictions They Put On Women Testify To That.

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!

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.

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

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

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

My Reaction To Porno Films Is As Follows: After The First Ten Minutes, I Want To Go Home And Screw. After The First Twenty Minutes, I Never Want To Screw Again As Long As I Live.

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.

Faith Is The Knowledge Of The Heart, Logick The Knowledge Of The Mind.

Art Is Always An Energy Exchange.

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

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

We All Parent The Best We Can. Being Human, We're Ambivalent. We Want Perfection For Our Babies, But We Also Need Sleep.

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

Experimentation

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Greatest Treasure

I Think Feminism Means What It Has Always Meant - Women Want To Use All Their Gifts, All Their Talents And Be Judged Impartially For Them. I Don't Think Feminism Has Ever Meant Anything Else.

I Knew I Was In England By The Smell.

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.

Loving Someone Is A Loss Of Freedom - But One Doesn't Think Of It As Loss Because One Gains So Much Else.

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.

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.

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

I Have Forgotten My Rave Reviews And Memorized My Vicious Ones - Like Most Writers.

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Robert W. Service

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