Erica Jong Quotes
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Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.
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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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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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Is perception equivalent to existence?
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The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton's first law of jealousy.
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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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The bruise on the heart which at first feels incredibly tender to the slightest touch eventually turns all the shades of the rainbow and stops aching. We forget about it. We even forget we have hearts until the next time. And then we wonder how we ever could have forgotten. We think this one is better, because, in fact, we cannot fully remember the time before.
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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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Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.
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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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Art is always an energy exchange.
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People in the land of LaLa look like expensive wax fruit. And they work hard to achieve that look.
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Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.
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How could one create life with someone who represented death?
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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 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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They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck.
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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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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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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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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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To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.
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Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.
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I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.