Wild Women Talk Back. Autumn Stephens

poet. Not, I hasten to add, that Dickinson's aloofness constituted a calculated strategy á la the Rules Girls. The truth is, the woman was so thoroughly averse to togetherness, romantic or otherwise, that she would sometimes converse only with those who agreed to remain in an adjoining room, or hidden behind a screen. Let's just say it must have seemed like a real milestone (and possibly proof of advanced metaphysical skills) to merely slip your arm around elusive Emily.

      At the opposite end of the Love ‘n’ Lust continuum, let us place Joan Crawford, the sizzling screen queen, who might be said to have posted a metaphorical “We're Open!” sign on her boudoir door. As La Crawford explained, she found sex vital to maintaining her glowing complexion. One can easily imagine that the same tonic contributed to the peaches-and-cream visage of voluptuous Mae West, who intimated (though not, as it happens, entirely accurately) that she never married because “I would have had to give up my hobby.” But how, then, to account for the unblemished beauty of Sharon Stone, who once bitterly opined that “Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships”? Obviously, one woman's hot affair is another's arid hell.

      From clogged-pore commentary to hormonally turbo-charged talk, you're about to encounter an abundance of provocative positions. Just don't forget that a girl can obtain excellent skin care products at the drugstore, too.

      If it has tires or testicles, you're going to have trouble with it.

      —Linda Furney, U.S. politician

      Personally, I like sex and I don't care what a man thinks of me as long as I get what I want from him—which is usually sex.

      —Valerie Perrine, film attraction

      I don't want to say that I want a man to like me for my mind, because that's going to sound like I think I'm Albert Einstein. But I would like someone who doesn't accuse me of making up words like “segue.”

      —Mariah Carey, singer

      I never married because I would have had to give up my favorite hobby.

      —Mae West, self-styled sex goddess

      Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.

      —Barbara Bush, former first lady

      If there is anything disagreeable going on, men are sure to get out of it.

      —Jane Austen, the perennially popular novelist

      I have no patience with women who measure and weigh their love like a country doctor dispensing capsules. If a man is worth loving at all, he is worth loving generously, even recklessly.

      —Marie Dressler, character actress of the thirties

      I really detest movies like Indecent Proposal and Pretty Woman because they send a message to women that sleeping with a rich man is the ultimate goal—and really, that's such a small part of it.

      —Laura Kightlinger, comic

      I knew that the men I married were very attractive to the opposite sex: the twenty marriages they had between them proves that, if nothing else does.

      —Ava Gardner, thrice-wed actress

      If men knew what women laughed about, they would never sleep with us.

      —Erica Jong, women's writer

      Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets.

      —Edna Ferber, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist

      Impotent!

      —Louise Colet, French journalist, describing a disappointing tryst in her diary

      Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

      —Iris Murdoch, bright light of Brit lit

      It was not cold. There was a fire in the studio.

      —Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's black sheep sister, explaining why she was comfortable modeling minus clothes

      Everybody should practice safe sex. ‘Cause nobody wants to be doing it and put an eye out.

      —Emmy Gay, “Fusion Art” entertainer

      My attitude toward men who mess around is simple: If you find 'em, kill ‘em.

      —Loretta Lynn, vengeful vocalist

      Too many cooks spoil the brothel.

      —Polly Adler, madam

      Women complain about sex more than men. Their gripes fall into two major categories: (1) Not enough. (2) Too much.

      —Ann Landers, advice columnist

      Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball.

      —Deborah Tannen, a top name in twentieth-century linguistics

      If you have enough fantasies, you're ready, in the event that something happens.

      —Sheila Ballantyne, American author

      Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships.

      —Sharon Stone, contemporary actress

      Lorena Bobbit said her husband didn't satisfy her sexually. Well, honey, if you thought it was bad before . . .

      —Brett Butler, the so-called Southern Lenny Bruce

      I'd rather pay a young man's fare to California than tell an old man the distance.

      —Jackie “Moms” Mabley, generation-spanning jokesmith