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Erica Jong Quotes about Writing - Page 2

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

It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's

It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.

Writing, Males, Fiction

Writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.

Sex, Writing, Turns

FaceBook post by Erica Jong from Mar 14, 2013

What a damnably lonely profession writing is! In order to do it, one must banish the world, and having banished it, one feels cosmically alone.

Lonely, Writing, Order

Erica Jong (1985). “Parachutes & kisses”, Signet

Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do. It's really dangerous and ultimately destroys you as a writer if you start thinking about responses to your work or what your audience needs.

Writing, Responsibility, Thinking

Charlotte Templin, Erica Jong (2002). “Conversations with Erica Jong”, p.7, Univ. Press of Mississippi

The aim of my writing is to utterly remove the distance between author and reader so that the book becomes a sort of semipermeable membrane through which feelings, ideas, nutrients pass.

Distance, Book, Writing

FaceBook post by Erica Jong from Sep 18, 2012

But we should ask the question: Why should a writer be more than a writer? Why should a writer be a guru? Why are we supposed to be psychiatrists? Isn't it enough to write and tell the truth? It's not like telling the truth is common. Writers are the earthworms of society. We aerate the soil. That's enough.

Writing, Soil, Common

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

Writing, Firsts, Should

the only people worth writing about are those about whom the last word cannot be said.

Writing, People, Lasts

Erica Jong (1994). “The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller”, p.52, Grove Press

Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.

Art, Book, Writing

When I'm sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it's silence and despair! It's not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.

Writing, Silence, Despair

The problem with feminism in the second wave was that we fought so much among ourselves, and I think we did so much damage to the movement... and I think the next wave, the third wave, is women mentoring younger women and women helping younger women to enter the political process and the writing world.

Writing, Thinking, Political

You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.

Writing, Voice, Giving

It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write.

Writing, Thinking, Parting

Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.289, Open Road Media

It takes a spasm of love to write a poem.

Writing

Erica Jong (1995). “How to Save Your Own Life”, N A L Trade

We write poems / as leaves give oxygen - / so we can breathe.

Writing, Oxygen, Giving

Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.

Writing, Cynical, Truth Is

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

There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.

Writing, Class, Feelings

Nothing you write is ever lost to you. At some other level your mind is working on it.

Writing, Mind, Levels

Charlotte Templin, Erica Jong (2002). “Conversations with Erica Jong”, p.11, Univ. Press of Mississippi

we write as if our lives depended upon it. They do.

Writing, Our Lives, Ifs

Erica Jong (2007). “What Do Women Want?: Essays by Erica Jong”, p.155, Penguin

I actually think leaving your children alone to fantasize, to write, to make projects on their own is good for them. Breathing down their necks is a form of control. Children should have their own space.

Children, Writing, Thinking

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

The only rule I have when writing is to try to tell the truth. That doesn't mean you can't exaggerate, edit, rewrite things to make them more dramatic. But emotional truth is what I look for in writing.

Writing, Mean, Emotional

I think poetry is the best thing I do. It's certainly the purest. I seem to switch gears without too much trouble. Non-fiction is in many ways the easiest to write.

Writing, Thinking, Fiction

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