Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.
ERICA JONGSilence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.
ERICA JONGIt is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.
ERICA JONGHome is where your books are.
ERICA JONGOften I find that poems predict what I’m going to do later in my own writing, and often I find that poems predict my life. So I think poetry is the most intense expression of feeling that we have.
ERICA JONGReally true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.
ERICA JONGPerhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.
ERICA JONGI hope we don’t have to keep going back over the same territory and winning the same rights over and over again. The battle for birth control. The battle for abortion.
ERICA JONGI 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 JONGBefore 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 JONGCourage is the only Magic worth having.
ERICA JONGCreativity demands nothing less than all you have. Talent alone is never enough.
ERICA JONGFriends love misery… our misery is what endears us to our friends.
ERICA JONGThe dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.
ERICA JONGTake your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
ERICA JONGDon’t ye know that ev’ry Soul on Earth feels itself to be an Orphan?
ERICA JONGOur empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us.
ERICA JONG