Erica Jong Quotes

Why does life need evidence of life?

I have ne'er been in a chamber with a lawyer when I did not wish either to scream with desperation or else fall into the deepest of sleeps, e'en when the matter concern'd my own future most profoundly.

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.

As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.

Each artist or writer who works in Venice comes to believe that the city yields its most special secret to him or her alone.

All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes.

Writers are always at the edge of the inferno, and the fire is licking at our toes. Luckily, this turns us on!

Every time I catch myself saying, "Oh no, you shouldn't try that," I think, "Yes, I should."

You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.

beware the Lure of a handsome Face, the all too ready Assumption that the lovely Façade must needs have lovely Chambers within; for as 'tis with Great Houses, so, too, with Great Men.

Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

What I discovered was is that it's rare to find a person that you feel very intimate with, and you can sleep with lots of people and not find what you're looking for.

Each one an antidote to the one that went before. Each one a reaction, an about-face, a rebound.

Famous people complain about fame, but they never want to give it back, myself included.

I look forward and see myself look back.

The most important education you get is your own - the one you learn in solitude.

in freeing myself from the romantic dream of finding another man to come along and rescue me, I learned that no one can rescue me except myself.

I believe that there's a force of life in the universe, and that when we're writing or making music or painting, we're likely to connect with that flow.

Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.

I actually think leaving your children alone to fantasize, to write, to make projects on their own is good for them. Breathing down their necks is a form of control. Children should have their own space.

Spring, / you are a pinking shears: you cut / fresh edges on the world.

Is perception equivalent to existence?

My grandchildren are fabulous and funny.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?

Few women see power as an end in itself. The point of power is the freedom to cultivate roses.

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.

In any triangle, who is the betrayer, who the unseen rival, and who the humiliated lover? Oneself, oneself, and no one but oneself!

Many, many people have done a lot more sexual experimentation than I have.

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.

Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.

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.

If 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.

It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.

Being a daughter is only half the equation; bearing one is the other.

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

The soul is awakened through service.

At fifty the madwoman in the attic breaks loose, stomps down the stairs, and sets fire to the house. She won't be imprisoned anymore.

All authors know that any book is a casting of runes, a reading of cards, a map of the palm and heart. We make up the ocean - then fall in. But we also write the life raft.

Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.

Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child.

People are terrified. A lot of them are in relationships that aren't satisfying, and if you tell them they can change their life, they get really scared.

Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture . . . Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

When I met my husband, I refused to invite him home for Passover because I was embarrassed my mother might serve all the catered dishes in the wrong order.

A baby's a full time job for three adults. Nobody tells you that when you're pregnant, or you'd probably jump off a bridge. Nobody tells you how all-consuming it is to be a mother-how reading goes out the window and thinking too.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

I think I've become more cynical about sex. Meaning, I don't think sex in and of itself leads to an epiphany.

Sex doesn't disappear, it just changes forms.