Quotes from Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.

Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married.

We came to realize how little married couples see of each other once they crawl in the bourgeois box.

You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.

We're programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You're supposed to work and suffer - and the trouble is: you believe it.

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.

Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.