Erica Jong Quotes
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There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.
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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.
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But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.
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Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.
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Throughout much of history, women writers have capitulated to male standards, and have paid too much heed to what Virginia Woolf calls "the angel in the house." She is that little ghost who sits on one's shoulder while one writes and whispers, "Be nice, don't say anything that will embarrass the family, don't say anything your man will disapprove of ..." [ellipsis in original] The "angel in the house" castrates one's creativity because it deprives one of essential honesty, and many women writers have yet to win the freedom to be honest with themselves.
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Motherhood cannot finally be delegated. Breast-feeding may succumb to the bottle; cuddling, fondling, and paediatric visits may also be done by fathers...but when a child needs a mother to talk to, nobody else but a mother will do.
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The Lives of Great Men are more oft' at variance with their profess'd Phillosophies than consistent with 'em.
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We've lost more men to homosexuality than we ever did in two world wars.
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Anger is really disappointed hope.
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Sex has the unparalleled power to make us absurd to ourselves. It also has the power to make us understand transcendence.
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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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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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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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In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving -instead of actually getting up and leaving.
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Home is where your books are.
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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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As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.
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The soul is awakened through service.
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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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Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.
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Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.
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If you apologize for something that isn't your fault in the first place, you, in effect, confirm their belief that it is your fault.
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Souls have neither Sex nor Colour.
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Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?