Quotes from Erica Jong

Anger is really disappointed hope.

Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.

Beware of the man who denounces woman writers; his penis is tiny and he cannot spell.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

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

We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.

We drove to the hotel and said goodbye. How hypocritical to go upstairs with a man you don't want to fuck, leave the one you do sitting there alone, and then, in a state of great excitement, fuck the one you don't want to fuck while pretending he's the one you do. That's called fidelity. That's called monogamy. That's called civilization and its discontents.

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.

Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture . . . Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.

The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

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.

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.

Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked. With your own voice,' he said.

Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.

When I met my husband, I refused to invite him home for Passover because I was embarrassed my mother might serve all the catered dishes in the wrong order.

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.

Every time I catch myself saying, "Oh no, you shouldn't try that," I think, "Yes, I should."

what was time but a convention, a habit of mind, a custom of dress?