Erica Jong Quotes
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Is perception equivalent to existence?
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Men must be stripped of arrogance and women must become independent for any mutually nurturing alliance to endure between the sexes.
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All authors know that any book is a casting of runes, a reading of cards, a map of the palm and heart. We make up the ocean - then fall in. But we also write the life raft.
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Surviving means being born over and over.
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I hope we don't have to keep going back over the same territory and winning the same rights over and over again. The battle for birth control. The battle for abortion. The parity of women's health. It's very depressing to think that you win these rights, but then you have to win them again, and again, and again, and fight the same battles over and over.
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Isn't it our job to be appalled by our parents? Isn't it every generation's duty to be dismayed by the previous generation? And to assert that we are different - only to discover later that we are distressingly the same?
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A wet dream in the mind of New York.
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Solitude is un-American.
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How could one create life with someone who represented death?
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I think we’re men and women more similar. In that we all deal with our fantasy lives and sometimes are disappointed by reality.
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Venice is ever the fragile labyrinth at the edge of the sea and it reminds us how brief and perilous the journeys of our lives are; perhaps that is why we love it so. City of plagues and brief liaisons, city of lingering deaths and incendiary loves, city of chimeras, nightmares, pigeons, bells. You are the only city in the world whose dialect has a word for the shimmer of canal water reflected on the ceiling of a room.
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I believe that there's a force of life in the universe, and that when we're writing or making music or painting, we're likely to connect with that flow.
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Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
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I don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish.
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A man assumes that a woman's refusal is just part of a game. Or, at any rate, a lot of men assume that. When a man says no, it's no. When a woman says no, it's yes, or at least maybe. There is even a joke to that effect. And little by little, women begin to believe in this view of themselves.
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Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked. With your own voice,' he said.
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Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile.
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I am old enough to know that laughter, not anger, is the true revelation.
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We were not human beings going through spiritual experiences; we were spiritual beings going through human experiences, in order to grow.
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Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.
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The problem with feminism in the second wave was that we fought so much among ourselves, and I think we did so much damage to the movement... and I think the next wave, the third wave, is women mentoring younger women and women helping younger women to enter the political process and the writing world.
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Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.
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All people believe their suffering is greater than others.
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Whenever I go anywhere but Italy for a vacation, I always feel vaguely disappointed, as if I have made a mistake.