Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
ERICA JONGDivorce is my generation’s coming of age ceremony – a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
More Erica Jong Quotes
-
-
I vowed to give up sex, bacon, and air travel if I ever made it back to terra firma in one piece.
ERICA JONG -
My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.
ERICA JONG -
Images are … a kind of emotional shorthand.
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 -
Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.
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 -
Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I’m doing something right.
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 -
As women got little crumbs of power, men began to act paranoid – as if we’d disabled them utterly.
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 -
Every time I catch myself saying, “Oh no, you shouldn’t try that,” I think, “Yes, I should.”
ERICA JONG -
My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings.
ERICA JONG -
The camera creates a magical transformation. It’s not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. …
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 -
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
ERICA JONG