Erica Jong Quotes
-
Every time I catch myself saying, "Oh no, you shouldn't try that," I think, "Yes, I should."
-
Faith is the Knowledge of the Heart, Logick the Knowledge of the Mind.
-
I remember everything but forgive anyway.
-
Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
-
I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye.
-
The perfect man is the true partner. Not a bed partner nor a fun partner, but a man who will shoulder burdens equally with you and possess that quality of joy.
-
I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.
-
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.
-
Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?
-
Loving someone is a loss of freedom - but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.
-
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.
-
I had been a feminist all my life, but the big problem was how to make your feminism jibe with you unappeasable hunger for male bodies.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Most sex doesn't really bring people together. You have to reach a certain level of connection, I think, and that's pretty rare.
-
What makes a Man love Death, Fanny? Is it because he hopes to avert his own by watchin' the Deaths of others? Doth he hope to devour Death by devourin' Executions with his Eyes? I'll ne'er understand it, if I live to be eight hundred Years. The Human Beast is more Beast than Human, 'tis true.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I can live without it all - love with its blood pump, sex with its messy hungers, men with their peacock strutting, their silly sexual baggage, their wet tongues in my ear.
-
As long as I'm facing the right direction, it doesn't matter the size of my steps.