Erica Jong
Not everybody has to be a parent. In fact, in an overpopulated world where our resources are shrinking, it would be wonderful if people who didn't want children felt free to say so. In the 1970s, there was more tolerance for the idea that not everybody needs to be a biological parent.Collection: Children
I think men have always been afraid of women's sexuality, and the restrictions they put on women testify to that.Collection: Men
I've become more conservative about sex as I've gotten older.Collection: Sex
I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.Collection: Thinking
That was probably the mistake of my generation, that we thought that having sex with anyone would be intimate and it wasn't.Collection: Sex
You have to enjoy being a woman. Why should being a woman be such a negative thing where you always have to improve yourself? I have never in my entire life met a man who didn't want to go to bed with me because I was too fat.Collection: Men
I prefer to work in the morning. I get up now at five in the morning. In the morning is when I feel freshest.Collection: Morning
Feminism is really the right of women to be full human beings and to not be defined only by their childbearing function. Feminism is really the right of women to be human beings. That's it, yet that's so frightening to a lot of people. A full human being wants satisfying work and love. A full human being is entitled to both, and is not simply defined by only one aspect of her being.Collection: People
We don't have a clear path forward, and that's been the case for feminism since the 18th century, when the idea of the rights of women actually began.Collection: Rights
We've shown again and again, in every UN report on the status of women, that wherever women control their own bodies and have access to education, societies prosper. Men's fortunes go up, children's fortunes go up. This is not news - it's been proven repeatedly. Anywhere those things are threatened, we have to defend them.Collection: Children
I'm not classically pretty; I've always been too heavy; I've had thyroid disease and it's very hard for me to lose weight - but I've always had men pursue me. I've always had that 'it' thing. God knows why. Maybe it's pheromones, I don't know.Collection: Men
There's another part of getting older that's just wonderful. Which is you see the way the stories turn out with peoples' lives.Collection: Getting Older
In a way women are fleshier because of estrogen. It's hard for us to lose weight because when we get super skinny we don't ovulate. Women in camps during the Holocaust didn't menstruate and didn't ovulate. They were starving; they were terrified. Why emulate that condition? It's nonsensical to me.Collection: Holocaust
I actually think leaving your children alone to fantasize, to write, to make projects on their own is good for them. Breathing down their necks is a form of control. Children should have their own space.Collection: Children
I was surprised by my daughter's generation and how they were rebelling against the '70s idea that sex was perfect and it should be sought.Collection: Daughter
The only rule I have when writing is to try to tell the truth. That doesn't mean you can't exaggerate, edit, rewrite things to make them more dramatic. But emotional truth is what I look for in writing.Collection: Writing
I think I've become more cynical about sex. Meaning, I don't think sex in and of itself leads to an epiphany.Collection: Sex
People are terrified. A lot of them are in relationships that aren't satisfying, and if you tell them they can change their life, they get really scared.Collection: People
I think a lot of people, when they read about a woman who acknowledges her sexuality and her feelings, get really scared. They say they want to be fearless, but in reality they're terrified. If they acknowledge their deepest feelings, they might have to change their lives.Collection: Thinking
Sex just as a drive, as a hormonal drive, is not very interesting.Collection: Sex
I was always a feminist. My mother was a feminist; my grandmother was a feminist. I always understood women had to fight very hard to do what they wanted to do in the world - that it wasn't an easy choice. But I think the most important part is that we all want the right to be taken seriously as human beings, and to use our talents without reservation, and that's still not possible for women.Collection: Mother
I think poetry is the best thing I do. It's certainly the purest. I seem to switch gears without too much trouble. Non-fiction is in many ways the easiest to write.Collection: Writing
Most sex doesn't really bring people together. You have to reach a certain level of connection, I think, and that's pretty rare.Collection: Sex
I don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish.Collection: Book
If you've been a pretty woman and always pursued by lovers, losing that and not having that - it feels like a great loss.Collection: Loss
The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton’s first law of jealousy.Collection: Firsts
From Roman times to the present, Italy has been a country to fall in love with – a tribute to all that is enduring, crazy, pagan, joyous, melancholy, at once banal and divine, in the human spirit.Collection: Country
If you apologize for something that isn’t your fault in the first place, you, in effect, confirm their belief that it is your fault.Collection: Firsts
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
A concern with ‘public morality’ is – if not the last refuge of a scoundrel – the first foray of the fascist.Collection: Firsts
You’re not too fat; you’re just in the wrong country.Collection: Country
All authors know that any book is a casting of runes, a reading of cards, a map of the palm and heart. We make up the ocean – then fall in. But we also write the life raft.Collection: Book
I don’t necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I’m trying to finish.Collection: Book
Women’s books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it’s a woman, she’s ‘spilling her guts,’ and it’s not art.Collection: Book