Erica Jong Quotes

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 anything, you risk even more.

~ 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

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

~ Erica Jong

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

~ Erica Jong

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.

~ 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

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

~ Erica Jong

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

~ Erica Jong

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

~ Erica Jong

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

~ 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

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

You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.

~ 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

Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married.

~ Erica Jong

We came to realize how little married couples see of each other once they crawl in the bourgeois box.

~ Erica Jong

Maybe marriages are best in middle age. When all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you're going to die anyway.

~ 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

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

~ 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

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

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

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

Why are women so ungenerous to other women? Is it because we have been tokens for so long? Or is there a deeper animosity we owe it to ourselves to ex

~ 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

It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present, how much of daily life is usually spent making plans and attempting to control the future. Never mind that you have no control over it. The idea of the future is our greatest entertainment, amusement, and time-killer.

~ Erica Jong

Tears are a form of communication - like speech - and require a listener.

~ Erica Jong

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.

~ 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

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

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

...filled her memory bank with shiny coins.

~ Erica Jong

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

~ 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

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

...readers who think I have answers when all I have are a few pointed questions...

~ 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

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

There's nothing good about being ordinary. People don't respect you for it. People run after people who are different, who have confidence in their own taste, who don't run with the herd. There is nothing gained by giving in to the pressures of group vulgarity.

~ 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