Erica Jong Quotes
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Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
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It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
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I am against censorship. I prefer the chaos of uncontrollable communication of all sorts to selective banning of certain materials. I do not think human beings can be trusted to be above politics and to promote the common good. One group's common good is another group's evil.
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The dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.
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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.
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Not everybody has to be a parent. In fact, in an overpopulated world where our resources are shrinking, it would be wonderful if people who didn't want children felt free to say so. In the 1970s, there was more tolerance for the idea that not everybody needs to be a biological parent.
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I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.
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Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
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What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave.
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I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.
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A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.
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Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.
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It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.
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A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.
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If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.
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Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.
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We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.
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In a world not made for women, criticism and ridicule follow us all the days of our lives. Usually they are indications that we are doing something right.
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Creativity demands nothing less than all you have. Talent alone is never enough.
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Memory is the crux of our humanity. Without memory we have no identities. That is really why I am committing an autobiography.
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Henry Miller was such a scribomaniac that even when he lived in the same house as Lawrence Durrell they often exchanged letters. For most of his life, Henry wrote literally dozens of letters a day to people he could have easily engaged in conversation - and did. The writing process, in short, was essential. As it is to all real writers, writing was life and breath to him. He put out words as a tree puts out leaves.
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Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.
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The sexuality doesn't end. It really doesn't. You're sexual your whole life, if you're a sexual person.
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Anger is really disappointed hope.