Erica Jong
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.Collection: Jealousy
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.Collection: Poetry
Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?Collection: Parenting
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.Collection: History
Men and women, women and men. It will never work.Collection: Men
You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.Collection: Women
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.Collection: Knowledge
Solitude is un-American.Collection: Alone
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.Collection: Change
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.Collection: Courage
I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to somewhere life is cheaper.Collection: Poetry
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.Collection: Legal
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.Collection: Wisdom
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.Collection: Marriage
The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.Collection: Famous
If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.
Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.
I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.
Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.
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.
Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.
Singularity shows something wrong in the mind.
Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.
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.
And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.
Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.
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.
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.
I remember everything but forgive anyway.
My grandchildren are fabulous and funny.
I've never been able to control my public image.
I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.
It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.
I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.
Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.
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.
When I met my husband, I refused to invite him home for Passover because I was embarrassed my mother might serve all the catered dishes in the wrong order.
I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.
All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes.
Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?