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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Erica Jong

Writing

World

Women

" 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. "

Erica Jong

See

Funny

" Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living. "

" And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. "

" We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't. "

" Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own. "

" Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness. "

" 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. "

" Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed. "

" 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. "

" He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it. "

" 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. "

Erica Jong

Successful

Sometimes

" Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. "

" 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. "

" Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Solitude is un-American. "

" 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. "