Erica Jong Quotes
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I am never so calm as after I have written. And the next morning I will feel the familiar anxiety and I will have to begin the process all over again.
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The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.
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Love is love, but marriage is an investment.
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We find our calling or it finds us, and it's a sin against the fates not to use your talent when you have it.
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The Passion that one Soul hath for God cannot be judged by another.
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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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It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write.
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I didn't believe in systems. Everything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at one's self. In laughing even at one's need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty. In seeing life as a fruitcake, including delicious plums and bad peanuts, but meant to be devoured hungrily all the same because you couldn't feast on the plums without also sometimes being poisoned by the peanuts.
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Is perception equivalent to existence?
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I actually think leaving your children alone to fantasize, to write, to make projects on their own is good for them. Breathing down their necks is a form of control. Children should have their own space.
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Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.
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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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Solitude is un-American.
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If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs.
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Nothing you write is ever lost to you. At some other level your mind is working on it.
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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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You reach a point in life where you realize that you might as well do what you need to do, because your being loved or not being loved is really a function of the people you encounter and not of yourself. That is an immensely liberating insight.
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Art is always an energy exchange.
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I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.
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A baby's a full time job for three adults. Nobody tells you that when you're pregnant, or you'd probably jump off a bridge. Nobody tells you how all-consuming it is to be a mother-how reading goes out the window and thinking too.
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To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.
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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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Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.
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My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher." - Socrates (470-399 B.C.) "Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't