People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn’t. Social attitudes don’t change in a straight line.
ERICA JONGIf 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.
More Erica Jong Quotes
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If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs.
ERICA JONG -
Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I’m doing something right.
ERICA JONG -
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
ERICA JONG -
Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.
ERICA JONG -
A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.
ERICA JONG -
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
ERICA JONG -
Don’t ye know that ev’ry Soul on Earth feels itself to be an Orphan?
ERICA JONG -
Of all the foolish Fears of Humankind, Fear of the Future is by far the most foolish.
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 -
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 -
Every time we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped about five hundred feet (leaving my stomach in my mouth)
ERICA JONG -
I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.
ERICA JONG -
Do all women have to keep silent for men to speak? Do all women have to be legless for men to walk?
ERICA JONG -
Images are … a kind of emotional shorthand.
ERICA JONG -
Is perception equivalent to existence?
ERICA JONG -
Loving someone is a loss of freedom – but one doesn’t think of it as loss because one gains so much else.
ERICA JONG -
And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
ERICA JONG -
The dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.
ERICA JONG -
The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton’s first law of jealousy.
ERICA JONG -
To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.
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 -
I look forward and see myself look back.
ERICA JONG -
The trick is not how much pain you feel–but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain.
ERICA JONG -
Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.
ERICA JONG -
I don’t know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else’s erotica that you don’t like.
ERICA JONG -
Keeping a journal implies hope.
ERICA JONG