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Erica Jong Quotes

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  • American-Author&PoetMarch 26, 1942
  • American-Author&Poet
  • March 26, 1942
Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.
Erica Jong
We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.
Erica Jong
You're afraid of criticism,' she says. 'But criticism is a sign of life! You know who doesn't get criticized? Nonentities! Only the dead escape criticism.
Erica Jong
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for being brave for risking everything for. And the trouble is if you don't risk everything you risk even more.
Erica Jong
...filled her memory bank with shiny coins.
Erica Jong
Young women dream of romance and passion as men dream of conquest because those dreams are necessary goads to leaving home and growing up.
Erica Jong
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
Erica Jong
Because When you write about people, you inevitably offend--but if you write about animals, the evil do not recognize themselves but the good understand immediately.
Erica Jong
I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.
Erica Jong
We also fought about everything -- like real sisters. We fought about money, bedrooms, whose car to take. Everyone of these fights was actually about something else -- usually abandonment. I wanted to be first on her list and she wanted to be first on mine. I wanted all her attention, all her love, all her care. I wanted her to be my mommy, my daddy, my sister. She wanted the same from me. She wanted to be fed, cared for, nurtured without limit. She wanted backrubs, poems, pastas, and to be left alone when she needed to be left alone. She wanted to come before my writing, my child, my man. And I wanted no less from her.She was sick at first, so I took care of her. Then I was jealous of the attention and she took care of me. We had gone down into the primal cave of our friendship. we had felt loved enough to rage and fight, to show the inside of our naked throats and our bared fags, and the friendship took another leap toward intimacy. Without rage, intimacy can't be.
Erica Jong
And the trouble is if you don't risk anything you risk even more.
Erica Jong
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.
Erica Jong
the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.
Erica Jong
Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.
Erica Jong
The virtues about marriage were mostly negative virtues. Being unmarried in a man's world was such a hassle that anything had to be better. Marriage was better. But not much. Damned clever, I thought, how men had made life so intolerable for single women that most would gladly embrace even bad marriages instead.
Erica Jong
Women in America read 'lifestyle' pages which are really glorifications of shopping. They teach us we must veil ourselves in make-up to be loved. And we willingly take the veil, thinking ourselves freed by it. Make-up is no more optional for us than the veil is for Arab women: it is our Western version of the chador.
Erica Jong
The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton's first law of jealousy.
Erica Jong
Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Erica Jong
I went for years not finishing anything. Because of course when you finish something you can be judged.... I had poems which were rewritten so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.
Erica Jong
In a certain sense, you do write to seduce the world, but when it happens, you begin to feel like a whore. The disparity between your life and your work turns out to be as great as ever. And the people seduced by your work are usually seduced by all the wrong reasons.
Erica Jong
Generations of women have sacrificed their lives to become their mothers. But we do not have that luxury any more. The world has changed too much to let us have the lives our mothers had. And we can no longer afford the guilt we feel at not being our mothers. We cannot afford any guilt that pulls us back to the past. We have to grow up, whether we want to or not. We have to stop blaming men and mothers and seize every second of our lives with passion. We can no longer afford to waste our creativity. We cannot afford spiritual laziness.
Erica Jong
What all the ads and whoreoscopes seemed to imply was that if only you were narcissistic enough, if only you took proper care of your smells, your har, your boobs, your eyelashes, your armpits, your crotch, your stars, your scars, and 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.
Erica Jong
We're programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You're supposed to work and suffer - and the trouble is: you believe it.
Erica Jong
There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but having no outlet, it implodes in a great fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.
Erica Jong
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Erica Jong
You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.
Erica Jong
If every day I dare to remember that I am here on loan that this house this hillside these minutes are all leased to me not given I will never despair.
Erica Jong
Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked.With your own voice,' he said.
Erica Jong
The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.
Erica Jong
I have accepted fear as a part of life-specifically the fear of change. ... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back....
Erica Jong
Naomi Wolf dares to explode the myth of 'victim feminism' and pleads for allowing women to be as full of good and bad desires as men, as avid for sexual fulfilment and power as men, but held back by the twin myths of good-girlism and sentimental sisterhood. Though she is perhaps too sanguine about women quickly overcoming their fear of power, Wolf fills me with hope because I see her analysis as having shattered the false categories that imprisoned my generation. Women do not have to agree about everything to join in alliance with each other to promote female power. Women do not have to cast out their inner bad girl to assert their right to power. Women do not have to cast out their sexuality to be 'good sisters'.
Erica Jong
When women have so absorbed the disease of sexism that they themselves can inflict it on each other, we clearly have a perfect, self-replenishing machine for the continuation of sexism. Unable to turn our assertiveness against men, we turn it against each other. Thus we remain stuck in the troubles we always had. It is imperative we renovate the machine -- no, not renovate it, but smash it entirely, so that we allow women to be all they need to be.
Erica Jong
Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.
Erica Jong
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
Erica Jong
I don't believe what you believe," I yelled, "and I don't respect your beliefs and I don't respect you for holding them. If you can honestly make a statement like that about the power behind the throne, how can you possibly understand anything about me or the things I'm struggling with? I don't want to live by the things you live by, I don't want that kind of life and I don't see why I should be judged by its standards.
Erica Jong
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.
Erica Jong
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.
Erica Jong
Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.
Erica Jong
Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
Erica Jong
How did I get to be a grown-up? At times, I find myself still sitting on the hillside, plotting revenge against the adult world.
Erica Jong
Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage-however often we are hurt as a result of it.
Erica Jong
Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married.
Erica Jong
I have accepted fear as a part of life-specifically the fear of change. ... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back. ...
Erica Jong
Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.
Erica Jong
I have accepted fear as part of life – specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back....
Erica Jong
All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.
Erica Jong
...readers who think I have answers when all I have are a few pointed questions...
Erica Jong
I know some good marriages-marriages where both people are just trying to get through their days by helping each other being good to each other.
Erica Jong
Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.
Erica Jong
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.
Erica Jong
Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.
Erica Jong
I had forgotten how awful it was to be a woman alone--the leering glances, the catcalls, the offers of help which you dared not accept for fear of incurring a sexual debt. The awful sense of vulnerability. No wonder I had gone from man to man and always wound up married. How could I have left Bennett? How could I have forgotten?
Erica Jong
Most people in this country are looking for literature that is useful. They feel that just exploring their feelings is good enough - they should be reading about leveraged buy-outs or how to get thin. We live in a culture that is so absolutely, madly focused on commercialism and on creating money and completely turned away from any other kind of creative value. People don't generally turn to poetry unless they're bereaved or have fallen in love. Or in adolescence, when their feelings are very strong and turbulent. I think most of us are dying for lack of spirit in this culture.
Erica Jong
Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same.
Erica Jong
The soul is awakened through service.
Erica Jong
Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.
Erica Jong
Tears are a form of communication - like speech - and require a listener.
Erica Jong
she died of internal weeping
Erica Jong
Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
Erica Jong
I have accepted fear as a part of life -specifically the fear of change ... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back. ...
Erica Jong
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