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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.

-Erica Jong

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The Greatest Feminists Have

Erica Jong

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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.

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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.

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.

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

That Was Probably The Mistake Of My Generation, That We Thought That Having Sex With Anyone Would Be Intimate And It Wasn't.

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.

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 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.

Jealousy Is All The Fun You Think They Had.

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.

What I Would Like To Give My Daughter Is Freedom. And This Is Something That Must Be Given By Example, Not By Exhortation.

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.

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

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.

A Wet Dream In The Mind Of New York.

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

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.

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.

The Lives Of Great Men Are More Oft' At Variance With Their Profess'd Phillosophies Than Consistent With 'em.

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

It Takes A Spasm Of Love To Write A Poem.

We Were Not Human Beings Going Through Spiritual Experiences; We Were Spiritual Beings Going Through Human Experiences, In Order To Grow.

Human Experience

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

Art Is Not Advocacy And Advocacy Is Not Art.

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

Few Women See Power As An End In Itself. The Point Of Power Is The Freedom To Cultivate Roses.

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

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.

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

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.

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

If You Imagine The World Listening, You'll Never Write A Line. That's Why Privacy Is So Important. You Should Write First Drafts As If They Will Never Be Shown To Anyone.

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

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

The Soul Is Awakened Through Service.

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

Where Is Hollywood Located? Chiefly Between The Ears. In That Part Of The American Brain Lately Vacated By God.

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

A New Dog Never Replaces An Old Dog, It Merely Expands The Heart.

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.

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.

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

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.

What Was The Point Of Spending Your Life With Someone You Were Always Looking For Ways To Decieve?

And The Trouble Is, If You Don't Risk Anything, You Risk Even More.

Photographs Are The Most Curious Indicators Of Reality.

Murky Language Means Someone Wants To Pick Your Pocket.

I Thought To Spend My Declining Years Writing Poetry And Teaching - But That Won't Pay The Bergdorf's Bill. I Think I'll Move To Somewhere Life Is Cheaper.

And What If I Don't Want Forgiveness?

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

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

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.

Underneath It All, You Longed To Be Annihilated By Love.

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

Gossip Is The Opiate Of The Oppressed.

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

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.

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.

Never Joke With The Press. Irony Does Not Translate Into Newsprint.

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

Greatest Treasure

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 Find Our Calling Or It Finds Us, And It's A Sin Against The Fates Not To Use Your Talent When You Have It.

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.

Singularity Shows Something Wrong In The Mind.

We Write Poems / As Leaves Give Oxygen - / So We Can Breathe.

There Is Nothing Fiercer Than A Failed Artist. The Energy Remains, But, Having No Outlet, It Implodes In A Great Black Fart Of Rage Which Smokes Up All The Inner Windows Of The Soul. Horrible As Successful Artists Often Are, There Is Nothing Crueler Or More Vain Than A Failed Artist.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Home Is Where Your Books Are.

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.

Women Who Bear Children Before They Establish Serious Habits Of Work, May Never Establish Them At All.

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

Exceptional People Are Often Called Crazy By The Ordinary World.

I'm Very Dependant. I Fall Apart Regularly.

A Poem (surely Someone Has Said This Before) Is A One-night Stand, A Short Story A Love Affair, And A Novel A Marriage.

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

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.

I Understand That Unless You Have A Government Of Laws, Rather Than A Government Of People, You Cannot Protect Dissent. And I Understand, As A Woman Who Probably Would Have Been Burned In The Marketplace For Witchcraft Only About 200 Years Ago, That I Need The First Amendment More Than Anybody Does. And That Even If I Am Repelled By Child Pornography Or Bob Guccione's Productions, That I Have To Protect Those Things, Because Essentially It's In My Self-interest To Do So.

Most Sex Is Not Really Intimate.

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.

Having Stopped Expecting Truth, We Rarely Get It.

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.

... What Is Great Poetry, After All, But The Continuation Of The Human Voice After Death?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Love Is Everything It's Cracked Up To Be

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

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.

Sex And Creativity Are Often Seen By Dictators As Subversive Activities.

Writing About Sex Turns Out To Be Just Writing About Life.

Language Can't Be Appropriated By One Person, One Poet. The Words Belong To All Of Us.

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.

As Long As I'm Facing The Right Direction, It Doesn't Matter The Size Of My Steps.

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

Falling In Love

Women Are Individuals In Parenting, And Why Not?

Though My Friends Envied Me Because I Always Seemed So Cheerful And Confident, I Was Secretly Terrified Of Practically Everything.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Very Interesting

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

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.

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

Eating Is Never So Simple As Hunger.

The Aim Of My Writing Is To Utterly Remove The Distance Between Author And Reader So That The Book Becomes A Sort Of Semipermeable Membrane Through Which Feelings, Ideas, Nutrients Pass.

I 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.

Humor Is One Of The Most Serious Tools We Have For Dealing With Impossible Situations.

Impossible Situations

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

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

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.

If We Don't Risk Anything, We Risk Even More.

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.

Love Is Love, But Marriage Is An Investment.

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

I 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.

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

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

How Could One Create Life With Someone Who Represented Death?

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

I Remember Everything But Forgive Anyway.

Remembers Everything

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.

I Have Lived My Life According To This Principle: If I'm Afraid Of It, Then I Must Do It.

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.

It Is Not Surprising That Venice Is Known Above All For Mirrors And Glass Since Venice Is The Most Narcissistic City In The World, The City That Celebrates Self-mirroring.

Anger Is Really Disappointed Hope.

A Dreary Censorship, And Self-censorship, Has Been Imposed On Books By The Centralization Of The Book Industry.

In Loving Life You Love What Can't Survive.

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.

It Is Not Unusual To Hate Great Writers Before We Learn To Love Them. Because They Have Created Something That Did Not Yet Exist, They Must Also Create Their Audience. Sometimes The Audience Is Not Yet Ready. Sometimes It Has Yet To Be Born.

It's Easier To Write About Pain Than About Joy. Joy Is Wordless.

I Look Forward And See Myself Look Back.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

I Am Not Sure If Love Is A Salve Or Just A Deeper Kind Of Wound.

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.

Beware Of The Man Who Praises Women's Liberation; He Is About To Quit His Job.

No One Ever Found Wisdom Without Also Being A Fool.

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.

Writers Do Not Choose Their Subjects; Their Subjects Choose Them.

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

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.

It Takes Courage To Lead A Life. Any Life.

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.

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

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

She Was Mine And Not-mine All At Once. She Was The Most Beautiful Thing I Had Ever Seen And The Most Terrifying.

Beautiful Things

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Ken, My Husband, Just Smelled Like He Belonged To Me. I'm Not Talking About Hygiene. I'm Talking About When You Hug Him, He Either Feels Like A Member Of Your Tribe Or Not. It's Their Scent.

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.

The Trick Is Not How Much Pain You Feel - But How Much Joy You Feel

The Sexuality Doesn't End. It Really Doesn't. You're Sexual Your Whole Life, If You're A Sexual Person.

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.

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.

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.

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

Because I Loved Myself, I Was Loved.

All People Believe Their Suffering Is Greater Than Others.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

As A Seasoned Insomniac, I Knew Sometimes The Way To Beat Sleeplessness Was To Outwit It: To Pretend You Didn't Care About Sleeping. Then Sometimes Sleep Became Piqued, Like A Rejected Lover, And Crept Up To Try To Seduce You.

A Book Burrows Into Your Life In A Very Profound Way Because The Experience Of Reading Is Not Passive.

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

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

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

If You've Been A Pretty Woman And Always Pursued By Lovers, Losing That And Not Having That - It Feels Like A Great Loss.

This Is The Sad Bed Of Chosen Chastity Because You Are Miles And Mountains Away.

Long Distance Relationship

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