Erica Jong Quotes
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Every time we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped about five hundred feet (leaving my stomach in my mouth) I vowed to give up sex, bacon, and air travel if I ever made it back to terra firma in one piece.
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It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.
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And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
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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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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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Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.
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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.
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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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A Soul is partly given, partly wrought; remember always that you are the Maker of your own Soul.
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The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach.
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I remember everything but forgive anyway.
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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?
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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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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.
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What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation.
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Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.
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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.
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The most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.
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Men and women, women and men. It will never work.
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Souls have neither Sex nor Colour.
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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.
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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.
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Love is serene and calm
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If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.