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Erica Jong Quotes - Page 8

All Quotes Age Art Atheist Being Strong Birth Blame Censorship Children Country Courage Creativity Culture Divorce Dying Earth Eating Fame Fear Feelings Feminism Fighting Flying Funny Getting Older Giving Gossip Guilt Hate Heart Home House Hunger Hurt Husband Identity Inspirational Joy Language Life Literature Loss Love Magic Marriage Memories Morning Motherhood Pain Passion Past Reading Reality Responsibility Risk School Sexuality Silence Sleep Solitude Soul Survival Talent Teaching Waiting War Writing

I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it.

I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it.

Inspirational, Principles, Ifs

FaceBook post by Erica Jong from Feb 29, 2012

I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.

Mean, Thinking, Important

Poetry is fired by love.

Poetry Is

A baby's mother also needs a mother.

Mother, Baby, Needs

Erica Jong (2006). “Fear of Fifty”, p.174, Penguin

I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of the bathtub plug a man?

Men, Invention, Plugs

Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.413, Open Road Media

Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.

Sweet, Sex, Real

Erica Jong (2007). “Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life”, p.89, Penguin

Love is serene and calm

Love, Advice, Calm

Erica Jong (2013). “Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected”, p.20, Open Road Media

Hate generalizes; love is particular.

Love, Life, Hate

Erica Jong (1991). “Becoming light: poems, new and selected”, HarperCollins Publishers

Harriet van Horne He makes love to me expertly, mechanically, coldly... He's pressing all my buttons, as if I were a pocket calculator.

Making Love, Buttons, Pockets

Sex doesn't disappear, it just changes forms.

Sex, Disappear, Form

Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.

Doe, Irony, Journalism

Erica Jong (2013). “Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice”, p.27, Open Road Media

I can live without it all - love with its blood pump, sex with its messy hungers, men with their peacock strutting, their silly sexual baggage, their wet tongues in my ear.

Love, Sex, Silly

Erica Jong (2013). “Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected”, p.238, Open Road Media

Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

Witty, Powerful, Women

Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.187, Open Road Media

Few women see power as an end in itself. The point of power is the freedom to cultivate roses.

Power, Rose, Ends

Erica Jong (1999). “What Do Women Want?: Bread, Roses, Sex, Power”, Perennial

I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.

Character, Writing, Thinking

It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper.

Years, Two, White

FaceBook post by Erica Jong from Jan 31, 2012

Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms!

Love, Song, Good Life

Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.27, Open Road Media

Solitude is considered un-American.

Solitude

But come back in November or December, in February or March, when the fog, la nebbia, settles upon the city like a marvelous monster, and you will have little trouble believing that things can appear and disappear in this labyrinthine city, or that time here could easily slip in its sprockets and take you, willingly or unwillingly, back.

Believe, Fog, Cities

Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.

Thinking, Dying, Young

Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.375, Open Road Media

But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.

Atheist, Comforting, Atheism

Erica Jong (2013). “Sappho's Leap: A Novel”, p.266, Open Road Media

Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked. With your own voice,' he said.

Inspirational, Atheist, Voice

Erica Jong (2013). “Sappho's Leap: A Novel”, p.266, Open Road Media

Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile.

Laughter, Writing, Silence

Erica Jong (2006). “Fear of Fifty”, p.17, Penguin

As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.

Writing, Past, Thinking

Each artist or writer who works in Venice comes to believe that the city yields its most special secret to him or her alone.

Believe, Artist, Yield

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