Quotes from Erica Jong

There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but having no outlet, it implodes in a great fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.

I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.

Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.

This is the sad bed of chosen chastity because you are miles and mountains away.

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

Court, in our society, is often the last resort of stubbornness.

The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.

The sexuality doesn't end. It really doesn't. You're sexual your whole life, if you're a sexual person.

Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it.

I see that the greatest thing about getting older is how your judgment changes and how you come to understand the cycles of life. And you keep having these amazing flashes of understanding.

I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

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.

It's horrible getting older. I mean, it's wonderful because you see the circles of life get completed. But it's horrible losing your looks.

A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.

I've kept journals at many times in my life starting from when I was about 13 or 14. But it's boring and contrived to keep a journal every day. Better to write as the mood strikes.

It's important to know what you're going to spend your life on, and the only way you're going to find that is by connecting with the force inside yourself.

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.

Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life.

I've never been able to control my public image.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

I remember everything but forgive anyway.

I was afraid to write Fear of Flying ergo I had to write it. I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it then I must do it.

I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it.