Erica Jong citations

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

“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.”

“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”

“Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye…”

“Without sex it would be so easy to choose appropriate people to live with. Sex was the joker in an otherwise rational deck.”

“Because I loved myself, I was loved.”

“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.”

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

“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….”

“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.”

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

“Anger is really disappointed hope.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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…”