Erica Jong citations

Page 3

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

“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.”

“Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.”

“Hate generalizes; love is particular.”

“It is our old love I love.”

“Inevitably, I drank too much, talked too much, smiled too hard, swallowed back too much bile.”

“I only know that in our choice of friends and lovers and teachers who will change our lives, we are guided by forces which have nothing to do with the rationalizations we give.”

“There is a rhythm to the ending…”

“I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself. When Anne Sexton admonished me, "We are all writing God's poem," I took it to mean there should be no competition between writers because we are all involved in a common project, a common prayer. But to Gore's and Norman's generation, particularly those male writers who served in the second world war, the prizefighter paradigm remains.”

“Love is love, but marriage is an investment.”

“I'm very dependant. I fall apart regularly.”

“In loving life you love what can't survive…”

“Keeping a journal implies hope.”

“Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life.”

“The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.”

“Is perception equivalent to existence?”

“Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.”

“Having a baby with him meant marrying that face forever.”

“Everyone's a little crazy when you get inside their head… it's only a matter of degree.”

“What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to deceive?”

“Sheer bitchiness can be a sort of style.”