Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
Erica Jong
You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
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.
It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.
The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
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.
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
Men and women, women and men. It will never work.
Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
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.
No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.
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.
Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.
And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?
I don't think there's just one person for everyone. It would be very hard for me to be with a guy who was not bright or funny. And he'd have to see the absurdities of the world, not exactly as I see them necessarily.
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.
All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes.
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'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.
When everyone thinks they know you, it's hard not to be guarded.
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.
Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
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.
Solitude is un-American.
We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.
I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.
Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.
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.
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.
When I'm sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it's silence and despair! It's not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.
Sexism kind of predisposes us to see men's work as more important than women's, and it is a problem, I guess, as writers, we have to change.
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.
I think that Sappho expresses the orphaned part of ourselves. The orphaned part of ourselves that reaches out to passion for completion. That reaches out to motherhood for completion.
Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.
