Erica Jong Quotes

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Erica Jong

Profession : Novelist

Birth : March 26, 1942

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.

Erica Jong

Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?

Erica Jong

I believe that women should live for love, for motherhood and for intellect, and I believe we shouldn't have to choose. And I believe that's always been difficult for women, to express themselves intellectually, maternally, and passionately.

Erica Jong

Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

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

Erica Jong

I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.

Erica Jong

He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.

Erica Jong

Singularity shows something wrong in the mind.

Erica Jong

Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

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

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

I remember everything but forgive anyway.

Erica Jong

My grandchildren are fabulous and funny.

Erica Jong