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" I've never been able to control my public image. "
Erica Jong
Never
Public
Image
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" Famous people complain about fame, but they never want to give it back, myself included. "
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" 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. "
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" Jealousy is all the fun you think they had. "
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" All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes. "
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" He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it. "
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" 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. "
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" Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood. "
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" Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness. "
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" I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It's the source of my creativity. "
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" Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. "
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" I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers. "
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" Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed. "
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" It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously. "
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" I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid. "
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" 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. "
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" In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies, when they fall in love. "
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" Women are not the richer sex. Women are not equal in society. "
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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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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep. "
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