Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I’m doing something right.
ERICA JONGIt’s easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
More Erica Jong Quotes
-
-
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 -
In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap.
ERICA JONG -
We were not human beings going through spiritual experiences; we were spiritual beings going through human experiences, in order to grow.
ERICA JONG -
The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I’m thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho.
ERICA JONG -
Solitude is un-American.
ERICA JONG -
Friends love misery… our misery is what endears us to our friends.
ERICA JONG -
And what if I don’t want forgiveness?
ERICA JONG -
Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.
ERICA JONG -
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
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 -
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 -
A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.
ERICA JONG -
It’s horrible getting older. I mean, it’s wonderful because you see the circles of life get completed. But it’s horrible losing your looks.
ERICA JONG -
The soul is awakened through service.
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