Erica Jong Quotes

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Erica Jong

Profession : Novelist

Birth : March 26, 1942

Anybody who instantly goes from being a poet and a graduate student to being a public figure has to be in a state of shock. First people want to praise you, and then they want to attack you. No one can prepare you for it.

Erica Jong

As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.

Erica Jong

I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.

Erica Jong

Famous people complain about fame, but they never want to give it back, myself included.

Erica Jong

I do a lot of teaching... and so I think I know how hard it is for young writers, how they have to work two jobs to survive.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

I think that Sappho expresses the orphaned part of ourselves. The orphaned part of ourselves that reaches out to passion for completion. That reaches out to motherhood for completion.

Erica Jong

I don't think that I had any idea that 'Fear of Flying' would become a part of the culture. I had no idea that it would go all over the world and be published in Chinese and Serbo-Croat and so on.

Erica Jong

Women tend to be preservers of the social structure, of marriage. They don't want to upset their husbands or their significant others. They don't want to hurt people.

Erica Jong

Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong

I don't think there's just one person for everyone. It would be very hard for me to be with a guy who was not bright or funny. And he'd have to see the absurdities of the world, not exactly as I see them necessarily.

Erica Jong

Ken, my husband, just smelled like he belonged to me. I'm not talking about hygiene. I'm talking about when you hug him, he either feels like a member of your tribe or not. It's their scent.

Erica Jong

I have a very sensitive nose. I identify with dogs. I understand the world through my nose.

Erica Jong

I know so many women in their fifties, sixties and seventies who delight in being on their own. It's amazing. They don't see any stigma attached to it. We don't need a man to prove our identity anymore.

Erica Jong

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.

Erica Jong