-
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
Erica Jong -
It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write.
Erica Jong
-
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.
Erica Jong -
A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.
Erica Jong -
It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.
Erica Jong -
I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.
Erica Jong -
In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap, our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us.
Erica Jong -
I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.
Erica Jong
-
All people believe their suffering is greater than others.
Erica Jong -
Home is where your books are.
Erica Jong -
I've become more conservative about sex as I've gotten older.
Erica Jong -
I think we’re men and women more similar. In that we all deal with our fantasy lives and sometimes are disappointed by reality.
Erica Jong -
Nothing you write is ever lost to you. At some other level your mind is working on it.
Erica Jong -
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.
Erica Jong
-
Memory is the crux of our humanity. Without memory we have no identities. That is really why I am committing an autobiography.
Erica Jong -
Poems, like dreams, are a sort of royal road to the unconscious. They tell you what your secret self cannot express.
Erica Jong -
Is there no Villain in this World who doth not regard himself as a poor abus'd Innocent, no She-Wolf who doth not think herself a Lamb, no Shark who doth not fancy that she is a Goldfish?
Erica Jong -
Art is always an energy exchange.
Erica Jong -
And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
Erica Jong -
Plot is just a fancy way of saying 'and then.
Erica Jong
-
I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.
Erica Jong -
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.
Erica Jong -
Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.
Erica Jong -
My generation of young female writers discovered that we could dictate the form and content of our own fiction.
Erica Jong