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Erica Jong Quotes about Writing

All Erica Jong 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 quotes

The only difference between men and women is that women are able to create new little human beings in their bodies while simultaneously writing books, driving tractors, working in offices, planting crops - in general,

The only difference between men and women is that women are able to create new little human beings in their bodies while simultaneously writing books, driving tractors, working in offices, planting crops - in general, doing everything men do.

Book, Writing, Men

If 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.

Writing, Listening, Important

You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare

Writing, Knowing, Beginners

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.

Book, Writing, Thinking

erica jong “fear of flying”

Blocks usually stem from fear of being judged. If you imagine the world is listening, you'll never write a line.

Block, Writing, Inspire

It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.

Pain, Writing, Joy

FaceBook post by Erica Jong from Feb 25, 2012

I believe that there's a force of life in the universe, and that when we're writing or making music or painting, we're likely to connect with that flow.

Believe, Writing, Flow

Interview with Whitney Joiner, logger.believermag.com. October 17, 2013.

Often I find that poems predict what I'm going to do later in my own writing, and often I find that poems predict my life. So I think poetry is the most intense expression of feeling that we have.

Writing, Thinking, Expression

FaceBook post by Erica Jong from Mar 01, 2016

[Henry Miller] was such a scribomaniac that even when he lived in the same house as Lawrence Durrell they often exchanged letters. For most of his life, Henry wrote literally dozens of letters a day to people he could have easily engaged in conversation - and did. The writing process, in short, was essential. As it is to all real writers, writing was life and breath to him. He put out words as a tree puts out leaves.

Real, Writing, People

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged...I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.

Writing, Years, Finishing

I am not quite sure how writing changes things, but I know that it does. It is indirect-like the trails of earthworms aerating the earth. It is not always deliberate-like the tails of glowing dust dragged by comets.

Writing, Glowing, Dust

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

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

Writing, Heart, Exercise

Each day that I don't write I get more fragmented.

Writing, Each Day, Fragmented

I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.

Writing, Thinking, Who I Am

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

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

Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.

Home, Writing, Reality

One writes not by will but by surrender.

Writing, Surrender

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

I've kept journals at many times in my life starting from when I was about 13 or 14. But it's boring and contrived to keep a journal every day. Better to write as the mood strikes.

Writing, Diaries, Boring

Throughout much of history, women writers have capitulated to male standards, and have paid too much heed to what Virginia Woolf calls "the angel in the house." She is that little ghost who sits on one's shoulder while one writes and whispers, "Be nice, don't say anything that will embarrass the family, don't say anything your man will disapprove of ..." [ellipsis in original] The "angel in the house" castrates one's creativity because it deprives one of essential honesty, and many women writers have yet to win the freedom to be honest with themselves.

Honesty, Nice, Writing

I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.

Book, Writing, Hands

I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to somewhere life is cheaper.

Moving, Teaching, Writing

I tried to keep myself away from him by using con words like "fidelity" and "adultery", by telling myself that he would interfere with my work, that I had him I'd be too happy to write. I tried to tell myself I was hurting Bennett, hurting myself, making a spectacle of myself. I was. But nothing helped. I was possessed. The minute he walked into a room and smiled at me, I was a goner.

Hurt, Writing, Rooms

When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it's a wonderful way to spend one's life.

Writing, Thinking, Way

Charlotte Templin, Erica Jong (2002). “Conversations with Erica Jong”, p.130, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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