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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.

-Erica Jong

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There Is A Rhythm

Erica Jong

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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.

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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.

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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.

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We've Lost More Men To Homosexuality Than We Ever Did In Two World Wars.

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Pregnancy Seemed Like A Tremendous Abdication Of Control. Something Growing Inside You Which Would Eventually Usurp Your Life.

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Genius Is A Strong Aphrodisiac.

Birth Is The Start Of Loneliness And Loneliness The Start Of Poetry.

Fame Is Merely The Fact Of Being Misunderstood By Millions Of People.

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.

Women Are Not The Richer Sex. Women Are Not Equal In Society.

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

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.

Home Is Where Your Books Are.

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

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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.

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

Sex Is God's Joke On The Human Race ... If We Didn't Have Sex To Make Us Ridiculous, She Would Have Had To Think Up Something Else Instead.

All People Believe Their Suffering Is Greater Than Others.

Women Are Individuals In Parenting, And Why Not?

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

It Takes A Spasm Of Love To Write A Poem.

Writers Are Always At The Edge Of The Inferno, And The Fire Is Licking At Our Toes. Luckily, This Turns Us On!

The Most Important Thing For A Writer Is To Be Locked In A Study.

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

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.

My Grandchildren Are Fabulous And Funny.

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

Hate Generalizes; Love Is Particular.

[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.

Photographs Are The Most Curious Indicators Of Reality.

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.

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

Procrastination

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.

Solitude Is Considered Un-american.

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.

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.

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 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.

Of All The Foolish Fears Of Humankind, Fear Of The Future Is By Far The Most Foolish.

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.

Most Sex Is Not Really Intimate.

Betrayal Betrays The Betrayer.

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.

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.

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.

I Was Surprised By My Daughter's Generation And How They Were Rebelling Against The '70s Idea That Sex Was Perfect And It Should Be Sought.

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

Ambivalence Is A Wonderful Tune To Dance To. It Has A Rhythm All Its Own.

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

We Are Finally Driven To Monogamy Not By Morality But By Exhaustion.

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

Long Distance Relationship

There Are No Atheists On Turbulent Airplanes.

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.

We All Have Fantasies About Sex That Are More Perfect Than Anything In Reality.

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.

Pain Is Not Love. Love Flowers; Love Gives Without Taking; Love Is Serene And Calm.

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

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

The Trick Is Not How Much Pain You Feel--but How Much Joy You Feel. Any Idiot Can Feel Pain. Life Is Full Of Excuses To Feel Pain, Excuses Not To Live, Excuses, Excuses, Excuses.

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.

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.

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

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Christian Slater

Pope John XXIII

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