Erica Jong
Murky language means someone wants to pick your pocket.Collection: Mean
tis true that tho' People can transcend their Characters in Times of Tranquillity, they can ne'er do so in Times of Tumult.Collection: Character
the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.Collection: Soul
If we ban whatever offends any group in our diverse society, we will soon have no art, no culture, no humor, no satire. Satire is by its nature offensive. So is much art and political discourse. The value of these expressions far outweighs their risk.Collection: Art
A concern with 'public morality' is - if not the last refuge of a scoundrel - the first foray of the fascist.Collection: Lasts
I believe I belong to the last literary generation, the last generation, that is, for whom books are a religion.Collection: Believe
Blaming women is always in fashion.Collection: Fashion
the only people worth writing about are those about whom the last word cannot be said.Collection: Writing
The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach.Collection: Inspirational
Love is everything it's cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.Collection: Love
I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.Collection: Fear
I am old enough to know that laughter, not anger, is the true revelation.Collection: Laughter
What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to decieve?Collection: Way
If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs.Collection: Needs
Anger is really disappointed hope.Collection: Inspirational
Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That's one reason old men can send them to war.Collection: War
Courage is the only Magic worth having.Collection: Courage
A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.Collection: Night
Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it.Collection: Interesting
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.Collection: Hurt
Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.Collection: Believe
The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.Collection: Doe
And what if I don't want forgiveness?Collection: What If
There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.Collection: Marriage
We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion.Collection: Cynical
Loving someone is a loss of freedom - but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.Collection: Loss
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.Collection: America
The dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.Collection: Risk
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.Collection: Book
Pain is not love. Love flowers; love gives without taking; love is serene and calm.Collection: Pain
It is the artists who make the true value of the world, though at times they may have to starve to do it. They are like earthworms, turning up the soil so things can grow, eating dirt so that the rest of us may eat green shoots.Collection: Artist
You don't get to choose what you get famous for and you don't get to control which of your life's many struggles gets to stand for you.Collection: Struggle
No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.Collection: Wisdom
is there not an Arabick Proverb which goes, 'No one throws Stones at a Barren Tree'?Collection: Jealousy
A man assumes that a woman's refusal is just part of a game. Or, at any rate, a lot of men assume that. When a man says no, it's no. When a woman says no, it's yes, or at least maybe. There is even a joke to that effect. And little by little, women begin to believe in this view of themselves.Collection: Believe
art is not advocacy and advocacy is not art.Collection: Art
Being a daughter is only half the equation; bearing one is the other.Collection: Daughter
What makes a Man love Death, Fanny? Is it because he hopes to avert his own by watchin' the Deaths of others? Doth he hope to devour Death by devourin' Executions with his Eyes? I'll ne'er understand it, if I live to be eight hundred Years. The Human Beast is more Beast than Human, 'tis true.Collection: Eye
Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.Collection: Boredom
Eating is never so simple as hunger.Collection: Simple
I tried to keep myself away from him by using con words like "fidelity" and "adultery", by telling myself that he would interfere with my work, that I had him I'd be too happy to write. I tried to tell myself I was hurting Bennett, hurting myself, making a spectacle of myself. I was. But nothing helped. I was possessed. The minute he walked into a room and smiled at me, I was a goner.Collection: Hurt
Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.Collection: Flesh
It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.Collection: Writing
When you start having lunch and actually eating, it's already over.Collection: Love
Sex has the unparalleled power to make us absurd to ourselves. It also has the power to make us understand transcendence.Collection: Sex
Writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.Collection: Sex
each of us only feels the torn lining of his own coat and sees the wholeness of the other person's.Collection: Coats
Is there no Villain in this World who doth not regard himself as a poor abus'd Innocent, no She-Wolf who doth not think herself a Lamb, no Shark who doth not fancy that she is a Goldfish?Collection: Thinking
A Soul is partly given, partly wrought; remember always that you are the Maker of your own Soul.Collection: Soul