Erica Jong Quotes
You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.
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.
My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.
Love is everything it's cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.
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.
We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.
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.
Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.
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.
In any triangle, who is the betrayer, who the unseen rival, and who the humiliated lover? Oneself, oneself, and no one but oneself!
Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.
At fifty the madwoman in the attic breaks loose, stomps down the stairs, and sets fire to the house. She won't be imprisoned anymore.
Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.
The sexuality doesn't end. It really doesn't. You're sexual your whole life, if you're a sexual person.
The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation.
As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.
Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.
Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture . . . Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
The hardest part is believing in yourself at the notebook stage. It is like believing in dreams in the morning.
