Erica Jong Quotes
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But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.
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If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.
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Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.
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Fame is merely the fact of being misunderstood by millions of people.
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My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings.
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You don't get to choose what you get famous for and you don't get to control which of your life's many struggles gets to stand for you.
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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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The unconscious of an artist is her greatest treasure. It is what transmutes the dross of autobiography into the gold of myth.
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I don't think you will ever fully understand how you've touched my life and made me who I am. I don't think you could ever know just how truly special you are that even on the darkest nights you are my brightest star
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Creativity demands nothing less than all you have. Talent alone is never enough.
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Throughout much of history, women writers have capitulated to male standards, and have paid too much heed to what Virginia Woolf calls "the angel in the house." She is that little ghost who sits on one's shoulder while one writes and whispers, "Be nice, don't say anything that will embarrass the family, don't say anything your man will disapprove of ..." [ellipsis in original] The "angel in the house" castrates one's creativity because it deprives one of essential honesty, and many women writers have yet to win the freedom to be honest with themselves.
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Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye.
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I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading.
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I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.
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I believe that women should live for love, for motherhood and for intellect, and I believe we shouldn't have to choose. And I believe that's always been difficult for women, to express themselves intellectually, maternally, and passionately.
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There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh.
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Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
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Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?
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Loving someone is a loss of freedom - but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.
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As long as I'm facing the right direction, it doesn't matter the size of my steps.
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Every time I catch myself saying, "Oh no, you shouldn't try that," I think, "Yes, I should."
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We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.
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We don't have a clear path forward, and that's been the case for feminism since the 18th century, when the idea of the rights of women actually began.
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There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.