Top 55 Erica Jong Quotes

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.

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.

As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn’t write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.

I think that Sappho expresses the orphaned part of ourselves. The orphaned part of ourselves that reaches out to passion for completion. That reaches out to motherhood for completion.

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

When I’m sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it’s silence and despair! It’s not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.

Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?

At certain historic moments, grandparents took on childrearing responsibilities. In many cultures, they still do. Chinese grandparents who are able to retire at 55 are seen all over Beijing bouncing grandbabies. In the United States, we can’t afford to retire at 55.

It’s hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I believe that women should live for love, for motherhood and for intellect, and I believe we shouldn’t have to choose. And I believe that’s always been difficult for women, to express themselves intellectually, maternally, and passionately.

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

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.

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

My grandchildren are fabulous and funny.

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

I don’t think there’s just one person for everyone. It would be very hard for me to be with a guy who was not bright or funny. And he’d have to see the absurdities of the world, not exactly as I see them necessarily.

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.

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

Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can’t. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.

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

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

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

When everyone thinks they know you, it’s hard not to be guarded.

We all parent the best we can. Being human, we’re ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.

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.

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.

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

Solitude is un-American.

I know so many women in their fifties, sixties and seventies who delight in being on their own. It’s amazing. They don’t see any stigma attached to it. We don’t need a man to prove our identity anymore.

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.

In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies, when they fall in love.

I think feminism means what it has always meant – women want to use all their gifts, all their talents and be judged impartially for them. I don’t think feminism has ever meant anything else.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

It was unimaginable what happens to you when you get known for a book that everybody reads, or that everybody has heard of. If the book is said to be sexy, the crazies come out of the woodwork.

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

I guess the thing that I’m most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It’s the source of my creativity.

Singularity shows something wrong in the mind.

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.

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

People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn’t. Social attitudes don’t change in a straight line. There’s always a backlash against progressive ideas.