Erica Jong Quotes
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Perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.
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I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.
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The dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.
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When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it's a wonderful way to spend one's life.
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Harriet van Horne He makes love to me expertly, mechanically, coldly... He's pressing all my buttons, as if I were a pocket calculator.
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Poetry is fired by love.
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Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
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Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.
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You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.
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Language matters because whoever controls the words controls the conversation, because whoever controls the conversation controls its outcome, because whoever frames the debate has already won it, because telling the truth has become harder and harder to achieve in an America drowning in Orwellian Newspeak.
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In a world not made for women, criticism and ridicule follow us all the days of our lives. Usually they are indications that we are doing something right.
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There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.
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I have enormous pride in the survival of the Jewish people, the cultural heritage of the Jewish people, but I'm not observant, and I don't belong to a synagogue. I don't go to temple on high holy days, but I'm proud to be Jewish.
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Women in America read 'lifestyle' pages which are really glorifications of shopping. They teach us we must veil ourselves in make-up to be loved. And we willingly take the veil, thinking ourselves freed by it. Make-up is no more optional for us than the veil is for Arab women: it is our Western version of the chador.
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The desire for magic cannot be eradicated. Even the most supposedly rational people attempt to practice magic in love and war. We simultaneously possess the most primitive of brain stems and the most sophisticated of cortices. The imperatives of each coexist uneasily.
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Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do. It's really dangerous and ultimately destroys you as a writer if you start thinking about responses to your work or what your audience needs.
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Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life.
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Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.
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I think feminism means what it has always meant - women want to use all their gifts, all their talents and be judged impartially for them. I don't think feminism has ever meant anything else.
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You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare
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Allow me to put the record straight. I am forty-six and have been for some years past.
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I don't believe in organized religion. I believe that people should try to connect with their own life force and let it lead them to do with their lives what they will find satisfying.
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Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?
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Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.