Quote

Denounce useless guilt. Don’t make a cult of suffering. Live in the now(or at least the soon). Always do the things you fear most. Courage is an acquired taste like caviar. Trust all joy. If the evil eye fixes you in its gaze, look elsewhere. Get ready to be 87.

Erica Jong

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Erica Jong
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 26
Author
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
New York City
New York
Erica Mann Jong
Live
Trust
Acquired
Look
Joy
Cult
Looks
Ready
Elsewhere
Make
Least
Useless
Always
Suffering
Guilt
Fixes
Things
Eye
Soon
Caviar
Like
Evil
Taste
Denounce
Fear
Courage
Gaze

More quotes by Erica Jong

Image
I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it.
Erica Jong
Image
They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck.
Erica Jong
Image
All authors know that any book is a casting of runes, a reading of cards, a map of the palm and heart. We make up the ocean - then fall in. But we also write the life raft.
Erica Jong
Image
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 anything, you risk even more.
Erica Jong
Image
But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.
Erica Jong
Image
Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.
Erica Jong
Image
Most sex is not really intimate.
Erica Jong
Image
I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.
Erica Jong
Image
Writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.
Erica Jong
Image
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Erica Jong
Image
Plot is just a fancy way of saying 'and then.
Erica Jong
Image
No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Erica Jong
Image
I am never so calm as after I have written. And the next morning I will feel the familiar anxiety and I will have to begin the process all over again.
Erica Jong
Image
Coupling doesn't always have to do with sex ... Two people holding each other up like flying buttresses. Two people depending on each other and babying each other and defending each other against the world outside. Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.
Erica Jong
Image
I had been a feminist all my life, but the big problem was how to make your feminism jibe with you unappeasable hunger for male bodies.
Erica Jong
Image
There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.
Erica Jong
Image
I see that the greatest thing about getting older is how your judgment changes and how you come to understand the cycles of life. And you keep having these amazing flashes of understanding.
Erica Jong
Image
I see the whole episode in my memory as if it were a very crisply photographed black and white movie. Directed by Bergman perhaps.We are playing ourselves in the movie version. If only we could escape from always having to play ourselves !
Erica Jong
Image
Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
Erica Jong
Image
I am thinking of the onion again. . . . Not self-righteous like the proletarian potato, nor a siren like the apple. No show-off like the banana. But a modest, self-effacing vegetable, questioning, introspective, peeling itself away, or merely radiating halos like ripples.
Erica Jong