Erica Jong Quotes
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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 believe I belong to the last literary generation, the last generation, that is, for whom books are a religion.
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Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.
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it is not unusual to hate great writers before we learn to love them. Because they have created something that did not yet exist, they must also create their audience. Sometimes the audience is not yet ready. Sometimes it has yet to be born.
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Sex has the unparalleled power to make us absurd to ourselves. It also has the power to make us understand transcendence.
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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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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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I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.
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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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Singularity shows something wrong in the mind.
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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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Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
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Murky language means someone wants to pick your pocket.
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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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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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Souls have neither Sex nor Colour.
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Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?
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There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.
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Most sex doesn't really bring people together. You have to reach a certain level of connection, I think, and that's pretty rare.
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As a seasoned insomniac, I knew sometimes the way to beat sleeplessness was to outwit it: to pretend you didn't care about sleeping. Then sometimes sleep became piqued, like a rejected lover, and crept up to try to seduce you.
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Keeping a journal implies hope.
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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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Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry.
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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.