Quotes by Erica Jong

About Erica Jong:

Erica Jong is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry, and particularly for her 1973 novel Fear of Flying. The book became famously controversial for its attitudes towards female sexuality and figured prominently in the development of second-wave feminism. According to Washington Post, it has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

she died of internal weeping

Erica Jong

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

Erica Jong

Most people in this country are looking for literature that is useful. They feel that just exploring their feelings is good enough - they should be reading about leveraged buy-outs or how to get thin. We live in a culture that is so absolutely, madly...

Erica Jong

Blush like you mean it

Erica Jong

I could become servile, cloying, saccharinely sweet: the whole package of lies that passes in the world as femininity.

Erica Jong

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

Erica Jong

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.

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 never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

Erica Jong

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

Erica Jong

I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It's the source of my creativity.

Erica Jong

Women are not the richer sex. Women are not equal in society.

Erica Jong

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

Erica Jong

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

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

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

Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?

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

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

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 ...

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

Author Bio

  • NameErica Jong
  • DescriptionNovelist, poet, memoirist, critic
  • BornMarch 26, 1942
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Novelist
  • WorksFear Of Flying