Quotes from Erica Jong

How did I get to be a grown-up? At times, I find myself still sitting on the hillside, plotting revenge against the adult world.

I've not ceased being fearful, I've gone ahead despite the pounding in my heart that says: turn back, turn back, you'll die if you go too far.

If you don't risk anything, you risk more

aphrodite's laughter shakes the sky

If I got rid of my demons, I'd lose my angels. —Tennessee Williams

I love to go to sleep, when bed takes me like a lover

She lives as if she is constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away from all this. All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?

Did I want to dance? Of course I did and that's not all.

And what is laughter anyway? Changing the angle of vision.

she died of internal weeping

As long as women are denied the priesthood, we will try to make our own rituals at our own kitchen altars and we will sew our own magical capes at our own sewing machines

You're afraid of criticism,' she says. 'But criticism is a sign of life! You know who doesn't get criticized? Nonentities! Only the dead escape criticism.

No wonder the word 'feminism' was feared. It had been much too narrowly defined. I define a feminist as a self-empowering woman who wishes the same for her sisters. I do not think the term implies a certain sexual orientation, a certain style of dress or membership in a certain political party. A feminist is merely a woman who refuses to accept the notion that women's power must come through men.

These bits speak history's tattered tale. How we cling to scraps, shards, sea glass- because we cannot stay.

The earth is God's book but in our blindness, we have obliterated letters so we may say God has abandoned us. It is we who are illiterate.

You go through life looking for a teacher and then when you find him, you become so dependent on him that you grow to hate him. Or else you wait for him to show his weakness and then you despise him for being human.

Whatwe fear we also desire, and what we desire we fear.

That's what a writer is -- a conqueror of fears.

and the trouble is, if you risk nothing, you risk even more...

Beware of the man who wants to protect you; he will protect you from everything but himself

I could become servile, cloying, saccharinely sweet: the whole package of lies that passes in the world as femininity.

People don't complete us. We complete ourselves. If we haven't the power to complete ourselves, the search for love becomes a search for self-annihilation; and then we try to convince ourselves that self-annihilation is love.

Uno no tiene por qué pedir disculpas si quiere ser el dueño de su propia alma... para bien o para mal. Cuando ya todo se ha dicho y hecho, es todo cuanto queda.

When women have so absorbed the disease of sexism that they themselves can inflict it on each other, we clearly have a perfect, self-replenishing machine for the continuation of sexism. Unable to turn our assertiveness against men, we turn it against each other. Thus we remain stuck in the troubles we always had. It is imperative we renovate the machine -- no, not renovate it, but smash it entirely, so that we allow women to be all they need to be.