Erica Jong Quotes

“Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.”

“I don't think you will ever fully understand how you've touched my life and made me who I am. I don't think you could ever know just how truly special you are that even on the darkest nights you are my brightest star”

“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.”

“Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye…”

“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.”

“Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.”

“A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.”

“Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it…”

“I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it.”

“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….”

“Great loves have legs and wings. They are substantial. They do not dissapate so easily… Great loves have staying power. Or so I told myself.”

“The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.”

“I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.”

“Pain is not love. Love flowers; love gives without taking; love is serene and calm.”

“…I am sure that when we love we are better than ourselves and when we hate, worse.”

“Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.”

“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't…”

“Beware of the man who denounces woman writers; his penis is tiny and he cannot spell.”

“Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.”

“We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.”

“The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.”

“I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.”

“You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.”

“Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.”

“I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.”

“My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.”

“Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.”

“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.”

“Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked.
With your own voice,' he said.”

“Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.”

“Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.”

“There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.”

“…if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.”

“Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.”

“You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare”

“the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.”

“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.”

“I don't know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else's erotica that you don't like. People are interested in their own sexuality and they've always reflected it in their art. End of story.”

“All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.”

“I see the whole episode in my memory as if it were a very crisply photographed black and white movie. Directed by Bergman perhaps. We are playing ourselves in the movie version. If only we could escape from always having to play ourselves!”

“Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.”

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

“They all cheat sooner or later. You might as well have one who isn't a bore the rest of the time.”

“If you apologize for something that isn't your fault in the first place, you, in effect, confirm their belief that it is your fault.”

“Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.”

“All people believe their suffering is greater than others.”

“…the ocean kept falling into itself, gathering itself up, and falling into itself again.”

“Betrayal does that -- betrays the betrayer.”

“Underneath it all, you longed to be annihilated by love…”

“Photographs… are the most curious indicators of reality.”

“Never follow a dog act. You know you're on the skids when you play yourself in the movie version of your life.”

“It takes a spasm of love to write a poem.”

“It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present.”

“The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.”

“Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.”

“Loving someone is a loss of freedom -- but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.”

“…jealousy makes the prick grow harder. And the cunt wetter.”

“The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach.”

“I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world…”

“The ultimate sexist put-down: the prick which lies down on the job.”

“I look forward and see myself look back.”

“Why does life need evidence of life?”

“I am not sure if love is a salve or just a deeper kind of wound.”

“Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry…”

“How could one create life with someone who represented death?”

“Friends love misery… our misery is what endears us to our friends.”