I have accepted fear as part of life – specifically the fear of change… I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back….
the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.
Show me a woman who doesn’t feel guilty and I’ll show you a man.
Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.
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.
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.
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.
Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.
Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.
Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.
You don’t have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.
Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married.
We came to realize how little married couples see of each other once they crawl in the bourgeois box.
Maybe marriages are best in middle age. When all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you’re going to die anyway.
Everyone has talent. What’s rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.
Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage-however often we are hurt as a result of it.
We’re programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You’re supposed to work and suffer – and the trouble is: you believe it.
Why are women so ungenerous to other women? Is it because we have been tokens for so long? Or is there a deeper animosity we owe it to ourselves to ex
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.
Tears are a form of communication – like speech – and require a listener.
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.
There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but having no outlet, it implodes in a great fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.
There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
Because When you write about people, you inevitably offend–but if you write about animals, the evil do not recognize themselves but the good understand immediately.
Without the gods, how would I sing?’ I asked.With your own voice,’ he said.
…readers who think I have answers when all I have are a few pointed questions…
How did I get to be a grown-up? At times, I find myself still sitting on the hillside, plotting revenge against the adult world.
Young women dream of romance and passion as men dream of conquest because those dreams are necessary goads to leaving home and growing up.
You’re afraid of criticism,’ she says. ‘But criticism is a sign of life! You know who doesn’t get criticized? Nonentities! Only the dead escape criticism.
And what is laughter anyway? Changing the angle of vision.
The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton’s first law of jealousy.
Rendall’s first law of jealousy: jealousy does the cock harder and pussy wetter.
Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.
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. …
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….
I have not ceased being fearful but I have ceased to let fear control me.
Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.
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. …
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
I know some good marriages-marriages where both people are just trying to get through their days by helping each other being good to each other.
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same.
I went for years not finishing anything. Because of course when you finish something you can be judged…. I had poems which were rewritten so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.
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. …
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 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.
And 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.
I was afraid to write Fear of Flying ergo I had to write it. I have lived my life according to this principle: If I’m afraid of it then I must do it.
Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.
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.
Famous people complain about fame, but they never want to give it back, myself included.
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching – but that won’t pay the Bergdorf’s bill. I think I’ll move to somewhere life is cheaper.
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.
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.
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.