We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly...spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.- Susan Taylor--Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to nurture it in solitude and to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.
Erica JongO what is it about having one's own Babe upon one's Hip that makes a Woman wish to go home to her Mother? A Desire to say: 'Look, the Circle is compleat'? A Desire to say: 'Look, I have cross'd the Divide and now am more like you'? A Desire to say: 'Look, this Babe I offer you is my most precious Gift'?
Erica JongIf we are all made of God, it is our friends who remind us. We pass the gift of God to them. They pass it back to us when we need it most.
Erica JongPoetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.
Erica JongIf there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.
Erica JongThere is this tendency to think that if you could only find the magic way, then you could become a poet. "Tell me how to become a poet. Tell me what to do." . . . What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you're a poet. But there isn't one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn't any formula for it.
Erica Jong