Erica Jong Quotes

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

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. ...

Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked.With your own voice,' he said.

I went for years not finishing anything. Because of course when you finish something you can be judged.... I had poems which were rewritten so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.

We came to realize how little married couples see of each other once they crawl in the bourgeois box.

Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.

Women in America read 'lifestyle' pages which are really glorifications of shopping. They teach us we must veil ourselves in make-up to be loved. And we willingly take the veil, thinking ourselves freed by it. Make-up is no more optional for us than the veil is for Arab women: it is our Western version of the chador.

Maybe marriages are best in middle age. When all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you're going to die anyway.

In a certain sense, you do write to seduce the world, but when it happens, you begin to feel like a whore. The disparity between your life and your work turns out to be as great as ever. And the people seduced by your work are usually seduced by all the wrong reasons.

Tears are a form of communication - like speech - and require a listener.

It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.