Erica Jong Quotes
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I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.
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Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.
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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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Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye.
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Every time I catch myself saying, "Oh no, you shouldn't try that," I think, "Yes, I should."
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We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.
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I believe that women should live for love, for motherhood and for intellect, and I believe we shouldn't have to choose. And I believe that's always been difficult for women, to express themselves intellectually, maternally, and passionately.
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We don't have a clear path forward, and that's been the case for feminism since the 18th century, when the idea of the rights of women actually began.
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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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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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I prefer to work in the morning. I get up now at five in the morning. In the morning is when I feel freshest.
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Keeping a journal implies hope.
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Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could.
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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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It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
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Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.
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I remember everything but forgive anyway.
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We've lost more men to homosexuality than we ever did in two world wars.
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I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading.
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Anger is really disappointed hope.
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we need poetry most at those moments when life astounds us with losses, gains, or celebrations. We need it most when we are most hurt, most happy, most downcast, most jubilant. Poetry is the language we speak in times of greatest need. And the fact that it is an endangered species in our culture tells us that we are in deep trouble.
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No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
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Pain is not love. Love flowers; love gives without taking; love is serene and calm.
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I was surprised by my daughter's generation and how they were rebelling against the '70s idea that sex was perfect and it should be sought.