Erica Jong Quotes
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Women who bear children before they establish serious habits of work, may never establish them at all.
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She was mine and not-mine all at once. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and the most terrifying.
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One writes not by will but by surrender.
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I tried to keep myself away from him by using con words like "fidelity" and "adultery", by telling myself that he would interfere with my work, that I had him I'd be too happy to write. I tried to tell myself I was hurting Bennett, hurting myself, making a spectacle of myself. I was. But nothing helped. I was possessed. The minute he walked into a room and smiled at me, I was a goner.
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Venice, that capital city of dream and intrigue, that double city (one above and seemingly solid, one below, wavering and reflected in the waters), which never disappoints.
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As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.
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It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper.
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Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
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The body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.
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I think men have always been afraid of women's sexuality, and the restrictions they put on women testify to that.
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I mostly hate organized religion, which I think is a force for the oppression of women and creates warfare.
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Perhaps it is because Venice is both liquid and solid, both air and stone, that it somehow combines all the elements crucial to make our imaginations ignite and turn fantasies into realities.
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As women, we can't look old. We can't be fat. We're supposed to look like the 14-year-old models in Vogue, who are younger and younger and skinnier and skinnier, and they are air-brushed and contoured and Photoshopped.
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People are terrified. A lot of them are in relationships that aren't satisfying, and if you tell them they can change their life, they get really scared.
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There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.
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Spring, you are a pinking shears: you cut fresh edges on the world.
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Writers do not choose their subjects; their subjects choose them.
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But we should ask the question: Why should a writer be more than a writer? Why should a writer be a guru? Why are we supposed to be psychiatrists? Isn't it enough to write and tell the truth? It's not like telling the truth is common. Writers are the earthworms of society. We aerate the soil. That's enough.
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O what is it about having one's own Babe upon one's Hip that makes a Woman wish to go home to her Mother? A Desire to say: 'Look, the Circle is compleat'? A Desire to say: 'Look, I have cross'd the Divide and now am more like you'? A Desire to say: 'Look, this Babe I offer you is my most precious Gift'?
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I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.
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It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.
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The only people worth writing about are those about whom the last word cannot be said.
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I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly.
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Writers are always at the edge of the inferno, and the fire is licking at our toes. Luckily, this turns us on!