Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.
ERICA JONGFear is a sign-usually a sign that I’m doing something right.
More Erica Jong Quotes
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How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one’s nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right.
ERICA JONG -
Flesh is merely a lesson. We learn it & pass on.
ERICA JONG -
Breast-feeding may succumb to the bottle; cuddling, fondling, and paediatric visits may also be done by fathers…but when a child needs a mother to talk to, nobody else but a mother will do.
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 -
The trick is not how much pain you feel–but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain.
ERICA JONG -
You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
ERICA JONG -
It’s easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
ERICA JONG -
The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.
ERICA JONG -
No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
ERICA JONG -
I look forward and see myself look back.
ERICA JONG -
Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage — however often we are hurt as a result of it.
ERICA JONG -
A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.
ERICA JONG -
It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.
ERICA JONG -
Freedom is a loose leash, license to be different from your mother and still be loved…Freedom is…not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.
ERICA JONG -
If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs.
ERICA JONG