Erica Jong Quotes
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Love is love, but marriage is an investment.
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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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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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Every time I catch myself saying, "Oh no, you shouldn't try that," I think, "Yes, I should."
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People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas.
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Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.
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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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We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.
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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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It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.
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we need poetry most at those moments when life astounds us with losses, gains, or celebrations. We need it most when we are most hurt, most happy, most downcast, most jubilant. Poetry is the language we speak in times of greatest need. And the fact that it is an endangered species in our culture tells us that we are in deep trouble.
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We write as if our lives depended upon it. They do.
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I was always a feminist. My mother was a feminist; my grandmother was a feminist. I always understood women had to fight very hard to do what they wanted to do in the world - that it wasn't an easy choice. But I think the most important part is that we all want the right to be taken seriously as human beings, and to use our talents without reservation, and that's still not possible for women.
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Each day that I don't write I get more fragmented.
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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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It's horrible getting older. I mean, it's wonderful because you see the circles of life get completed. But it's horrible losing your looks.
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What all the ads and whorescopes seemed to imply was that if only you took proper care of your smells, your hair, your boobs, your eyelashes, your armpits, your crotch, your stars, your scars, your choice of Scotch in bars - you would meet a beautiful powerful, potent, and rich man who would satisfy every longing, fill every hole, make your heart skip a beat (or stand still), make you misty, and fly you to the moon (preferably on gossamer wings), where you would live totally satisfied forever.
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No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
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Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.
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I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.
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Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.
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Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.
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Faith is the Knowledge of the Heart, Logick the Knowledge of the Mind.
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I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.