Erica Jong Quotes
-
Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.
-
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.
-
Great loves have legs and wings. They are substantial. They do not dissapate so easily... Great loves have staying power. Or so I told myself.
-
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.
-
Everyone's a little crazy when you get inside their head... it's only a matter of degree.
-
Home is where your books are.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The soul is awakened through service.
-
A Soul is partly given, partly wrought; remember always that you are the Maker of your own Soul.
-
I remember everything but forgive anyway.
-
What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation.
-
The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach.
-
Souls have neither Sex nor Colour.
-
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.
-
In freeing myself from the romantic dream of finding another man to come along and rescue me, I learned that no one can rescue me except myself.
-
As yet we use our media only for selling things - including, of course, political candidates. What will happen when someone masters the art of selling souls?
-
Men and women, women and men. It will never work.
-
The camera creates a magical transformation. It's not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. ... Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don't feel any experience is complete unless it's recorded.
-
Love is serene and calm
-
Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.
-
There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.
-
The most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.
-
... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?