Erica Jong

Singularity shows something wrong in the mind.

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

If you don't risk anything you risk even more.

Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.

I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.

Pleasure is terrifying because it breaks down the boundaries between people. Embracing passion means living with fear.

I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.

This is the sad bed of chosen chastity because you are miles and mountains away.

Surviving means being born over and over again.

There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame.

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.

Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.

The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton's first law of jealousy.

Poems, like dreams, are a sort of royal road to the unconcious. They tell you what your secret self cannot express.

Solitude is un-American.

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

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

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.

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

When I was a ten-year old bookworm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons, it used to amaze me that these remote people could provoke me to love.

What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave.

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.

Betrayal does that betrays the betrayer.

In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving - instead of actually getting up and leaving.

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.

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.

Love is everything it's cracked up to be It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

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.

Sexism kind of predisposes us to see men's work as more important than women's, and it is a problem, I guess, as writers, we have to change.

And the trouble is if you dont risk anything you risk even more.

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.

Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.

I've never been able to control my public image.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

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

We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion.

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

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

Women are not the richer sex. Women are not equal in society.

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

It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.

Men and women, women and men. It will never work.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

A baby's mother also needs a mother.

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

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.

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.

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

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

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

I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to somewhere life is cheaper.

It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.

I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: Turn back.

He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.

I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

it is not unusual to hate great writers before we learn to love them. Because they have created something that did not yet exist, they must also create their audience. Sometimes the audience is not yet ready. Sometimes it has yet to be born.

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

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it l

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.

Women tend to be preservers of the social structure, of marriage. They don't want to upset their husbands or their significant others. They don't want to hurt people

I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.

Keeping a journal implies hope.

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.

Perhaps all artists were in a sense housewives tenders of the earth household.

My grandchildren are fabulous and funny.

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

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.

Biography is essentially a collaborative art the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.

I remember everything but forgive anyway.

The problem with feminism in the second wave was that we fought so much among ourselves, and I think we did so much damage to the movement... and I think the next wave, the third wave, is women mentoring younger women and women helping younger women to enter the political process and the writing world.

Dogs come into our lives to teach us about love, they depart to teach us about loss. A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart. If you have loved many dogs your heart is very big.

I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.