Erica Jong Quotes

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Erica Jong

Profession : Novelist

Birth : March 26, 1942

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Erica Jong

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Erica Jong

Men and women, women and men. It will never work.

Erica Jong

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

Erica Jong

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

Erica Jong

If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

Erica Jong

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

Erica Jong

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.

Erica Jong

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

Erica Jong

We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.

Erica Jong

I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly.

Erica Jong