Erica Jong Quotes
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In any triangle, who is the betrayer, who the unseen rival, and who the humiliated lover? Oneself, oneself, and no one but oneself!
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Each one an antidote to the one that went before. Each one a reaction, an about-face, a rebound.
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We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion.
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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.
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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.
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At certain historic moments, grandparents took on childrearing responsibilities. In many cultures, they still do. Chinese grandparents who are able to retire at 55 are seen all over Beijing bouncing grandbabies. In the United States, we can't afford to retire at 55.
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If you've been a pretty woman and always pursued by lovers, losing that and not having that - it feels like a great loss.
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When you start having lunch and actually eating, it's already over.
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Art is not advocacy and advocacy is not art.
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Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.
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Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need them at the times when they need them ... Cosmic forces guide such passings-along.
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I don't know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else's erotica that you don't like. People are interested in their own sexuality and they've always reflected it in their art. End of story.
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I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world.
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It is the artists who make the true value of the world, though at times they may have to starve to do it. They are like earthworms, turning up the soil so things can grow, eating dirt so that the rest of us may eat green shoots.
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A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.
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What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.
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I understand that unless you have a government of laws, rather than a government of people, you cannot protect dissent. And I understand, as a woman who probably would have been burned in the marketplace for witchcraft only about 200 years ago, that I need the First Amendment more than anybody does. And that even if I am repelled by child pornography or Bob Guccione's productions, that I have to protect those things, because essentially it's in my self-interest to do so.
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The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
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Tis true that tho' People can transcend their Characters in Times of Tranquillity, they can ne'er do so in Times of Tumult.
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Each artist or writer who works in Venice comes to believe that the city yields its most special secret to him or her alone.
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Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.
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Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
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Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it.
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Women who bear children before they establish serious habits of work, may never establish them at all.