Erica Jong

Hooked for two years now on wrinkle creams     creams for
crowsfeet     ugly lines (if only there were one!)
any perfumed grease     which promises     youth     beauty
not truth     but all I need on earth     I've been studying
     how women age

the belly may be kept firm through numerous pregnancies
by means of sit-ups     jogging     dancing     (think of Russian ballerinas)
    & the cunt
as far as I know is ageless     possibly immortal     becoming simply
more open     more quick to understand     more dry-eyed     than at 22

which

after all     is what you were dying for     (as you ravaged
islands of turtles     beehives     oysterbeds     the udders of cows)
desperate to censor changes which you simply might     have let play
over you         lying back     listening         opening yourself
    letting the years make love the only way
        (poor blunderers)
            they know

The soul is awakened through service.

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

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more.

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.

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

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

I am thinking of the onion again. . . . Not self-righteous like the proletarian potato, nor a siren like the apple. No show-off like the banana. But a modest, self-effacing vegetable, questioning, introspective, peeling itself away, or merely radiating halos like ripples.