Top 430 Quotes & Sayings by Erica Jong
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American novelist Erica Jong.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
I think feminism means what it has always meant - women want to use all their gifts, all their talents and be judged impartially for them. I don't think feminism has ever meant anything else.
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.
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Sexism kind of predisposes us to see men's work as more important than women's, and it is a problem, I guess, as writers, we have to change.
I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
Famous people complain about fame, but they never want to give it back, myself included.
Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.
I remember everything but forgive anyway.
When I was a ten-year old bookworm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons, it used to amaze me that these remote people could provoke me to love.
We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.
It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.
Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.
When I met my husband, I refused to invite him home for Passover because I was embarrassed my mother might serve all the catered dishes in the wrong order.
My grandchildren are fabulous and funny.
Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
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.
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.
Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?
Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
Solitude is un-American.
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.
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
Women are not the richer sex. Women are not equal in society.
Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.
You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
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.
Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?
When everyone thinks they know you, it's hard not to be guarded.
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.
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.
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.
All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes.
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.
People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas.
It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.
Singularity shows something wrong in the mind.
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.
At certain historic moments, grandparents took on childrearing responsibilities. In many cultures, they still do. Chinese grandparents who are able to retire at 55 are seen all over Beijing bouncing grandbabies. In the United States, we can't afford to retire at 55.
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.
You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.
Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.
I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.
What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave.
Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.
And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
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.
He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.
Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.
If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
Men and women, women and men. It will never work.
I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.
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.
I've never been able to control my public image.
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist