Quotes from Erica Jong

The truth is: nobody bothers to kill poets in America. It's enough to buy them in universities. Undead.

My black hair, which used to glisten like wet violets on an ebony altar, is now a steely gray

If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

Whoever pushes America's sex button must be prepared for sirens and alarms. Whatever else we do in our lives will be drowned out by them.

Does love even have a sex? I doubt it. If you are lucky enough to love, who cares what decorative flesh your lover sports? The divine delta, that juicy fig, the powerful phallus, that scepter of state- each is only an aspect of Aphrodite, after all. We are all hermaphrodites at heart- aren't we? The delta is as soft as Aphrodite, the phallus stiff as Ares' spear. And no one wears anything for long but a coat of dust. Only the songs of passion linger

I didn't want to risk being called all the things women writers (even good women writers) are called: clever, witty, bright, touching, but lacks scope.' I wanted to write about the whole world.

My real despair came because Aphrodite withdrew her favours. Aphrodite needs nothing from me. She always has new singers to celebrate her. So what if they are my students, acolytes, and imitators? So what if they learned everything they know from me? The goddess of love favours the young. She always has

Both dogs and people are nicer after hitting bottom.

Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married.

Jews are made by the existence of anti-semitism....

All this mundane: merely the ordinary experience of my whiplash generation. Caught between our mothers (who stayed home) and the next generation (who took the right to achieve for granted), we suffered all the transitions of women's history inside our skulls. Whatever we did felt wrong. And whatever we did was fiercely criticized. That was the fate of our generation.

Beware of the man who praises women's liberation. He's about to quit his job.

I don't believe in dying for causes. I don't believe in dying for poetry. Once I worshiped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.

Even when we are screaming and throwing things, we are friends. Who is the man and who is the woman? Sometimes neither of us knows. The marriage is androgynous -- like the closest friendships. It will keep.

I am nailed to the cross of my imagination.

But at the bottom of all the gloom, there is a sense that we are responsible for each other -- if not for each other's happiness. There is empathy, admiration, respect for the other's intelligence and honesty.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.

Si eres una hembra y tenías talento, la vida resultaba una trampa, no importaba el camino que eligieras. O te sumergías en la vida doméstica (y tenías fantasías a lo Walter Mitty para fugarte) o suspirabas por la vida doméstica en todo tu arte. Nunca podías escapar a la condición de hembra. El conflicto estaba escrito en tu mismísima sangre. Miedo a volar

Being loved by the world is no substitute for having been loved by one person when you were small

Mann ist was mann isst.

She is the witch. You wish you were she. Except when the time comes for burning.

What is the witch's heritage? Her great, great, great, great, great ancestress is Ishtar-Diana-Demeter. Her father is man. Her midwife, his fears. Her torturer, his fears. Her executioner, his fears. Her malignant power, his fears. Her healing power, her own.

Maybe she will make our wishes come true before we burn her.

Not only is the archaeological record incomplete, but it has been sifted largely by male archaeologists, wearing the blinkers of patriarchy, assuming that monotheism represented an advance over polytheism and paganism, and seeking to justify the holy books upon which their patriarchal civilization was based.