Erica Jong Quotes
-
I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.
-
The trick is not how much pain you feel - but how much joy you feel
-
I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself. When Anne Sexton admonished me, "We are all writing God's poem," I took it to mean there should be no competition between writers because we are all involved in a common project, a common prayer. But to Gore's and Norman's generation, particularly those male writers who served in the second world war, the prizefighter paradigm remains.
-
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.
-
Sex has the unparalleled power to make us absurd to ourselves. It also has the power to make us understand transcendence.
-
I was always a feminist. My mother was a feminist; my grandmother was a feminist. I always understood women had to fight very hard to do what they wanted to do in the world - that it wasn't an easy choice. But I think the most important part is that we all want the right to be taken seriously as human beings, and to use our talents without reservation, and that's still not possible for women.
-
it is not unusual to hate great writers before we learn to love them. Because they have created something that did not yet exist, they must also create their audience. Sometimes the audience is not yet ready. Sometimes it has yet to be born.
-
I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.
-
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.
-
It is not surprising that Venice is known above all for mirrors and glass since Venice is the most narcissistic city in the world, the city that celebrates self-mirroring.
-
Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
-
Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.
-
It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
-
The perfect man is the true partner. Not a bed partner nor a fun partner, but a man who will shoulder burdens equally with you and possess that quality of joy.
-
My grandchildren are fabulous and funny.
-
There's another part of getting older that's just wonderful. Which is you see the way the stories turn out with peoples' lives.
-
The most important education you get is your own - the one you learn in solitude.
-
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.
-
Murky language means someone wants to pick your pocket.
-
Plot is just a fancy way of saying 'and then.
-
A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.
-
Blocks usually stem from fear of being judged. If you imagine the world is listening, you'll never write a line.
-
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.
-
I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.