Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.
ERICA JONGYoung people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That’s one reason old men can send them to war.
More Erica Jong Quotes
-
-
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates (470-399 B.C.) “Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t
ERICA JONG -
The parity of women’s health. It’s very depressing to think that you win these rights, but then you have to win them again, and again, and again, and fight the same battles over and over.
ERICA JONG -
Every time I catch myself saying, “Oh no, you shouldn’t try that,” I think, “Yes, I should.”
ERICA JONG -
I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.
ERICA JONG -
People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn’t. Social attitudes don’t change in a straight line.
ERICA JONG -
Photographs are the most curious indicators of reality.
ERICA JONG -
Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
ERICA JONG -
I look forward and see myself look back.
ERICA JONG -
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
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 -
Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
ERICA JONG -
I don’t think you could ever know just how truly special you are that even on the darkest nights you are my brightest star
ERICA JONG -
It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.
ERICA JONG -
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.
ERICA JONG -
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 -
I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself.
ERICA JONG -
Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.
ERICA JONG -
Often 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 JONG -
Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
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 -
Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don’t feel any experience is complete unless it’s recorded.
ERICA JONG -
The trick is not how much pain you feel – but how much joy you feel
ERICA JONG -
What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not exhortation.
ERICA JONG -
There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.
ERICA JONG -
And what if I don’t want forgiveness?
ERICA JONG -
I vowed to give up sex, bacon, and air travel if I ever made it back to terra firma in one piece.
ERICA JONG