Erica Jong Quotes
It is not surprising that Venice is known above all for mirrors and glass since Venice is the most narcissistic city in the world, the city that celebrates self-mirroring.
Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.
Perhaps it is because Venice is both liquid and solid, both air and stone, that it somehow combines all the elements crucial to make our imaginations ignite and turn fantasies into realities.
Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?
Memory is the most transient of all possessions. And when it goes, it leaves as few traces as stars that have disappeared.
Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.
In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving -instead of actually getting up and leaving.
I see that the greatest thing about getting older is how your judgment changes and how you come to understand the cycles of life. And you keep having these amazing flashes of understanding.
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.
All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.
Each artist or writer who works in Venice comes to believe that the city yields its most special secret to him or her alone.
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?
There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.
Writers tend to be addicted to houses ... We work at home, indulging the agoraphobia endemic to our kind. We are immersed in our surroundings to an almost morbid degree.
It's horrible getting older. I mean, it's wonderful because you see the circles of life get completed. But it's horrible losing your looks.
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.
Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.
If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.
All authors know that any book is a casting of runes, a reading of cards, a map of the palm and heart. We make up the ocean - then fall in. But we also write the life raft.
Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.
Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life.
As women got little crumbs of power, men began to act paranoid - as if we'd disabled them utterly. Do all women have to keep silent for men to speak? Do all women have to be legless for men to walk?
We find our calling or it finds us, and it's a sin against the fates not to use your talent when you have it.
If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.
