Quotes from Erica Jong

I think that Sappho expresses the orphaned part of ourselves. The orphaned part of ourselves that reaches out to passion for completion. That reaches out to motherhood for completion.

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.... I had poems which were rewritten so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.

If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.

The soul is awakened through service.

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

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more.

Solitude is un-American.

Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That's one reason old men can send them to war.

We've lost more men to homosexuality than we ever did in two world wars.

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.

Love is everything it's cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.

Love is love, but marriage is an investment.

Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same.

Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.

Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of the bathtub plug a man?

As women got little crumbs of power, men began to act paranoid - as if we'd disabled them utterly. Do all women have to keep silent for men to speak? Do all women have to be legless for men to walk?

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.

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

Few women see power as an end in itself. The point of power is the freedom to cultivate roses.

Women tend to be preservers of the social structure, of marriage. They don't want to upset their husbands or their significant others. They don't want to hurt people.