Quotes from Erica Jong

Sexism kind of predisposes us to see men's work as more important than women's, and it is a problem, I guess, as writers, we have to change.

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.

The Lives of Great Men are more oft' at variance with their profess'd Phillosophies than consistent with 'em.

beware the Lure of a handsome Face, the all too ready Assumption that the lovely Façade must needs have lovely Chambers within; for as 'tis with Great Houses, so, too, with Great Men.

The perfect man is the true partner. Not a bed partner nor a fun partner, but a man who will shoulder burdens equally with you and possess that quality of joy.

Beware of the man who denounces psychiatrists; / he is afraid.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings.

It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.

A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart.

... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?

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

Poetry is fired by love.

Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry.

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. ...

the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god's messenger.

If we are all made of God, it is our friends who remind us. We pass the gift of God to them. They pass it back to us when we need it most.

The Passion that one Soul hath for God cannot be judged by another.

You can't be creative and still be a good girl.

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.

People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas.

Anger is really disappointed hope.

what storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank.

Memory is the crux of our humanity. Without memory we have no identities. That is really why I am committing an autobiography.