Quotes from Erica Jong

As yet we use our media only for selling things - including, of course, political candidates. What will happen when someone masters the art of selling souls?

Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child.

Anybody who instantly goes from being a poet and a graduate student to being a public figure has to be in a state of shock. First people want to praise you, and then they want to attack you. No one can prepare you for it.

What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave.

At fifty the madwoman in the attic breaks loose, stomps down the stairs, and sets fire to the house. She won't be imprisoned anymore.

I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.

Betrayal does that -- betrays the betrayer

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.

Courage is the only Magic worth having.

The most important education you get is your own - the one you learn in solitude.

Images are ... a kind of emotional shorthand.

Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.

I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.

If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs.

I don't think that I had any idea that 'Fear of Flying' would become a part of the culture. I had no idea that it would go all over the world and be published in Chinese and Serbo-Croat and so on.

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

Will you ever? I dont think you will ever fully understand how you've touched my life and made me who I am.I don't think you could ever know just how truly special you are that even on the darkest nights you are my brightest star.

Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.

Allow me to put the record straight. I am forty-six and have been for some years past.

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

Men and women, women and men, It will never work.

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

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