From Fear of Flying
by Erica Jong
Published by Panther Books, Copyright 1973
ISBN: 0-586-04149-4
All the problems of love are problems of maldistribution. There's plenty to go around,
but it always goes to the wrong people, at the wrong times, in the wrong places.
We told long stories about our pasts, embellishing, embroidering, and dramatizing in the
manner of novelists. Of course, we pretended to be telling the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth, but nobody (as Henry Miller says) can tell the absolute truth;
I'd almost rather he contradicted himself, but he's too perfect. He won't commit himself to a
statement unless he's sure it's definitive. You can't live that way -- trying to be
definitive all the time -- death's definitive.
"What makes you think love solves anything?"
"Maybe it doesn't solve anything," I said, "but I want it. I want to feel whole."