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What Storyteller Is Adequate To Her Story? The Story Carries Us Along, Bottles On The Tide, Each With Our Secret Mesage And The Fervent Hope That It Does Not Turn Out To Be Blank.

-Erica Jong

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What Storyteller Is Adequate

Erica Jong

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What Storyteller Is Adequate To Her Story? The Story Carries Us Along, Bottles On The Tide, Each With Our Secret Mesage And The Fervent Hope That It Does Not Turn Out To Be Blank.

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

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.

Any System Was A Straightjacket If You Insisted On Adhering To It So Totally And Humorlessly.

Anger Is Really Disappointed Hope.

Take Your Life In Your Own Hands, And What Happens? A Terrible Thing: No One To Blame.

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.

Blaming Women Is Always In Fashion.

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

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

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.

We Need Quiet Time To Examine Our Lives Openly And Honestly...spending Quiet Time Alone Gives Your Mind An Opportunity To Renew Itself And Create Order.- Susan Taylor--everyone Has A Talent. What Is Rare Is The Courage To Nurture It In Solitude And To Follow The Talent To The Dark Places Where It Leads.

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.

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

You Are Always Naked When You Start Writing; You Are Always As If You Had Never Written Anything Before; You Are Always A Beginner. Shakespeare Wrote Without Knowing He Would Become Shakespeare

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.

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.

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

Sadly, Because Of The Enormous Gap Between Rich And Poor, Some Mothers Can Afford Helpers, But Many Can't. Those Who Can Would Be Kinder To Refrain From Criticizing Other Women.

Nothing You Write Is Ever Lost To You. At Some Other Level Your Mind Is Working On It.

Most Sex Is Not Really Intimate.

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

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.

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

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.

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

To Name Oneself Is The First Act Of Both The Poet And The Revolutionary.

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

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.

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

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

Someday Every Woman Will Have Orgasms- Like Every Family Has Color Tv- And We Can All Get On With The Business Of Life.

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

Greatest Treasure

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

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.

Betrayal Betrays The Betrayer.

Because I Loved Myself, I Was Loved.

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

Fear Is A Sign-usually A Sign That I'm Doing Something Right.

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

The Soul Is Awakened Through Service.

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

I Have A Very Sensitive Nose. I Identify With Dogs. I Understand The World Through My Nose.

I Actually Think Leaving Your Children Alone To Fantasize, To Write, To Make Projects On Their Own Is Good For Them. Breathing Down Their Necks Is A Form Of Control. Children Should Have Their Own Space.

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

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.

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.

There Are No Atheists On Turbulent Airplanes.

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

A Baby's Mother Also Needs A Mother.

My Generation Had Doris Day As A Role Model, Then Gloria Steinem--then Princess Diana. We Are The Most Confused Generation.

I Don't Believe In Organized Religion. I Believe That People Should Try To Connect With Their Own Life Force And Let It Lead Them To Do With Their Lives What They Will Find Satisfying.

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

Photographs Are The Most Curious Indicators Of Reality.

Life Has No Plot. It Is By Far More Interesting Than Anything You Can Say About It.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Write Slowly By Hand. Publishing Is Effectively Bankrupt For You Unless You Are Danielle Steele. It Takes A Year To Write Book And Advances Are Going Down Or Disappearing.

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 Think Professionalism Is Important, And Professionalism Means You Get Paid.

Love Is Love, But Marriage Is An Investment.

I Remember Everything But Forgive Anyway.

Remembers Everything

Memory Is The Crux Of Our Humanity. Without Memory We Have No Identities. That Is Really Why I Am Committing An Autobiography.

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.

Once I Worshipped Keats For Dying Young. Now I Think It's Braver To Die Old.

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

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.

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

Having Stopped Expecting Truth, We Rarely Get It.

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

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.

Allow Me To Put The Record Straight. I Am Forty-six And Have Been For Some Years Past.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Young People Never Believe In The Possibility Of Their Own Deaths. That's One Reason Old Men Can Send Them To War.

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

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.

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.

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

But We Should Ask The Question: Why Should A Writer Be More Than A Writer? Why Should A Writer Be A Guru? Why Are We Supposed To Be Psychiatrists? Isn't It Enough To Write And Tell The Truth? It's Not Like Telling The Truth Is Common. Writers Are The Earthworms Of Society. We Aerate The Soil. That's Enough.

A Concern With 'public Morality' Is - If Not The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel - The First Foray Of The Fascist.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

The Words Carry Their Own Momentum. A Confession In Motion Tends To Stay In Motion. Newton's First Law Of Jealousy.

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.

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 Don't Think You Will Ever Fully Understand How You've Touched My Life And Made Me Who I Am. I Don't Think You Could Ever Know Just How Truly Special You Are That Even On The Darkest Nights You Are My Brightest Star

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

Solitude Is Considered Un-american.

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.

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

No One Ever Found Wisdom Without Also Being A Fool.

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.

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

Poems, Like Dreams, Are A Sort Of Royal Road To The Unconscious. They Tell You What Your Secret Self Cannot Express.

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

Silence Is The Bluntest Of Blunt Instruments.

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

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.

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 Hardest Part Is Believing In Yourself At The Notebook Stage. It Is Like Believing In Dreams In The Morning.

I Don't Cook. My Mother Didn't Cook. My Daughter Doesn't Cook.

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.

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

Why Does Life Need Evidence Of Life?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I Am Old Enough To Know That Laughter, Not Anger, Is The True Revelation.

Unhappiness Is Our Element. We Come To Believe We Can't Function Without It.

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.

Jealousy Is All The Fun You Think They Had.

Critics Write Out Of Intellectual Exercise, Not Poets. Poets Write Straight From The Heart.

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.

They Keep Saying The Right Person Will Come Along. I Think Mine Got Hit By A Truck.

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.

Bad Relationship

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

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

Divorce Is My Generation's Coming Of Age Ceremony - A Ritual Scarring That Makes Anything That Happens Afterward Seem Bearable.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I Have Not Ceased Being Fearful, But I Have Ceased To Let Fear Control Me.

Fear And Courage

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

Impossible Situations

Art Is Not Advocacy And Advocacy Is Not Art.

Exceptional People Are Often Called Crazy By The Ordinary 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.

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.

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.

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

Solitude Is Un-american.

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

Famous People Complain About Fame, But They Never Want To Give It Back, Myself Included.

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

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

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.

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.

I Don't Think That Sex Necessarily Produces Intimacy.

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

Sex Doesn't Disappear, It Just Changes Forms.

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

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.

Love Is Everything It's Cracked Up To Be

Good Sex Is A Mystery. Perhaps Humping And Pumping Is Not A Mystery, But Good Sex Is A Mystery, And How Human Beings Become Truly Intimate Remains A Mystery.

My Grandchildren Are Fabulous And Funny.

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.

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.

Everyone's A Little Crazy When You Get Inside Their Head... It's Only A Matter Of Degree.

A Wet Dream In The Mind Of New York.

Sometimes It Was Worth All The Disadvantages Of Marriage Just To Have That: One Friend In An Indifferent World.

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.

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

It Takes Courage To Lead A Life. Any Life.

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

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.

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.

Whenever I Go Anywhere But Italy For A Vacation, I Always Feel Vaguely Disappointed, As If I Have Made A Mistake.

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.

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.

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

I Don't Know What The Definition Of Pornography Is And Nobody Else Does Either. Pornography Is Somebody Else's Erotica That You Don't Like. People Are Interested In Their Own Sexuality And They've Always Reflected It In Their Art. End Of Story.

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.

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

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.

I Believe I Belong To The Last Literary Generation, The Last Generation, That Is, For Whom Books Are A Religion.

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.

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

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'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.

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?

I'm Very Dependant. I Fall Apart Regularly.

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 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?

When I Sit Down At My Writing Desk, Time Seems To Vanish. I Think It's A Wonderful Way To Spend One's Life.

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

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

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.

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