Do all women have to keep silent for men to speak? Do all women have to be legless for men to walk?
ERICA JONGDo 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.
More Erica Jong Quotes
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Before things are written down they don’t exist in quite the same way. The act of fixing them in words gives them a kind of currency that can be traded.
ERICA JONG -
Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.
ERICA JONG -
You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner.
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 -
It’s easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
ERICA JONG -
What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation.
ERICA JONG -
Keeping a journal implies hope.
ERICA JONG -
Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That’s one reason old men can send them to war.
ERICA JONG -
Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.
ERICA JONG -
The only difference between men and women is that women are able to create new little human beings in their bodies while simultaneously writing books, driving tractors, working in offices, planting crops – in general, doing everything men do.
ERICA JONG -
There’s always a backlash against progressive ideas.
ERICA JONG -
Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.
ERICA JONG -
Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye.
ERICA JONG -
Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.
ERICA JONG -
I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading.
ERICA JONG






