Erica jong quotes

You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

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

As a seasoned insomniac, I knew sometimes the way to beat sleeplessness was to outwit it: to pretend you didn't care about sleeping. Then sometimes sleep became piqued, like a rejected lover, and crept up to try to seduce you.

The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.

I know some good marriages-marriages where both people are just trying to get through their days by helping each other, being good to each other.

Loving someone is a loss of freedom - but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.

Memory is the most transient of all possessions. And when it goes, it leaves as few traces as stars that have disappeared.

Because I loved myself, I was loved.

Love is everything it's cracked up to be

The dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.

I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.

The soul is awakened through service.

Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.

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.

I hope we don't have to keep going back over the same territory and winning the same rights over and over again. The battle for birth control. The battle for abortion. The parity of women's health. It's very depressing to think that you win these rights, but then you have to win them again, and again, and again, and fight the same battles over and over.

Keeping a journal implies hope.

Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.

I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.

Conflict is the soul of literature.

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

Don't ye know that ev'ry Soul on Earth feels itself to be an Orphan?

Love is everything it's cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

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

Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.

Creativity demands nothing less than all you have. Talent alone is never enough.

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.

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher." - Socrates (470-399 B.C.) "Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't

If we are all made of God, it is our friends who remind us. We pass the gift of God to them. They pass it back to us when we need it most.

Blocks usually stem from fear of being judged. If you imagine the world is listening, you'll never write a line.

I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.

We were not human beings going through spiritual experiences; we were spiritual beings going through human experiences, in order to grow.

What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.

We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion.

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.

Betrayal betrays the betrayer.

of all the foolish Fears of Humankind, Fear of the Future is by far the most foolish.

My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.

It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.

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

I don't know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else's erotica that you don't like. People are interested in their own sexuality and they've always reflected it in their art. End of story.

Allow me to put the record straight. I am forty-six and have been for some years past.

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.

Why does life need evidence of life?

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

In loving life you love what can't survive.

Motherhood cannot finally be delegated. Breast-feeding may succumb to the bottle; cuddling, fondling, and paediatric visits may also be done by fathers...but when a child needs a mother to talk to, nobody else but a mother will do.

Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.

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.

We've lost more men to homosexuality than we ever did in two world wars.

The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.

Courage is the only Magic worth having.

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

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

Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child.

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

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?

A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart.

As long as I'm facing the right direction, it doesn't matter the size of my steps.

What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not exhortation. Freedom is a loose leash, license to be different from your mother and still be loved...Freedom is...not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.

And what if I don't want forgiveness?

They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck.

Is perception equivalent to existence?

There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.

Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I'm doing something right.

The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton's first law of jealousy.

It's important to know what you're going to spend your life on, and the only way you're going to find that is by connecting with the force inside yourself.

It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.

Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That's one reason old men can send them to war.

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.

Language matters because whoever controls the words controls the conversation, because whoever controls the conversation controls its outcome, because whoever frames the debate has already won it, because telling the truth has become harder and harder to achieve in an America drowning in Orwellian Newspeak.

Home is where your books are.

We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.

Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.

It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.

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

We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly...spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.- Susan Taylor--Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to nurture it in solitude and to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.

If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs.

Dogs come into our lives to teach us about love and loyalty. They depart to teach us about loss. A new dog never replaces an old dog; it merely expands the heart. If you have loved many dogs, your heart is very big.

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

I look forward and see myself look back.

The sexuality doesn't end. It really doesn't. You're sexual your whole life, if you're a sexual person.

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it.

I don't think you will ever fully understand how you've touched my life and made me who I am. I don't think you could ever know just how truly special you are that even on the darkest nights you are my brightest star

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

Anger is really disappointed hope.

The trick is not how much pain you feel - but how much joy you feel

A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.

Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it.

A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.

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.

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.

How could one create life with someone who represented death?

Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture . . . Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.

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

Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.

Solitude is un-American.

Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.

Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.

The only difference between men and women is that women are able to create new little human beings in their bodies while simultaneously writing books, driving tractors, working in offices, planting crops - in general, doing everything men do.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

Isn't it our job to be appalled by our parents? Isn't it every generation's duty to be dismayed by the previous generation? And to assert that we are different - only to discover later that we are distressingly the same?

My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings.

Art is always an energy exchange.

What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation.

If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

I remember everything but forgive anyway.

Flesh is merely a lesson. We learn it & pass on.

What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to decieve?

How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right.

I don't think that sex necessarily produces intimacy.

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

Love is love, but marriage is an investment.

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

I am old enough to know that laughter, not anger, is the true revelation.

Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.

Photographs are the most curious indicators of reality.

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

Images are ... a kind of emotional shorthand.

The camera creates a magical transformation. It's not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. ... Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don't feel any experience is complete unless it's recorded.

The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.

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