LONG can't take more than 4000 chars???

I'm having trouble entering a text article into a long datatype. I have no problems usually, but with an especially long article, I get this error:

ORA-01704: String literal too long

The oerr text is:

01704, 00000, "string literal too long"
// *Cause: The string literal is longer than 4000 characters.
// *Action: Use a string literal of at most 4000 characters.
// Longer values may only be entered using bind variables.

So, my questions:

How many characters are allowed in a LONG? What's a bind variable?

thanks,

• Kev