Quote

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.

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
First
Revolutionary
Oneself
Poet
Name
Names
Firsts

More quotes by Erica Jong

Image
When I was a ten-year old bookworm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons, it used to amaze me that these remote people could provoke me to love.
Erica Jong
Image
Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it.
Erica Jong
Image
A concern with 'public morality' is - if not the last refuge of a scoundrel - the first foray of the fascist.
Erica Jong
Image
What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to decieve?
Erica Jong
Image
A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.
Erica Jong
Image
Each day that I don't write I get more fragmented.
Erica Jong
Image
Mediocre prose might be read as an escape, might be spoken on television by actors, or mouthed in movies. But mediocre poetry did not exist at all. If poetry wasn't good, it wasn't poetry. It was that simple.
Erica Jong
Image
Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.
Erica Jong
Image
Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could.
Erica Jong
Image
Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.
Erica Jong
Image
The only rule I have when writing is to try to tell the truth. That doesn't mean you can't exaggerate, edit, rewrite things to make them more dramatic. But emotional truth is what I look for in writing.
Erica Jong
Image
Eating is never so simple as hunger.
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
I remember everything but forgive anyway.
Erica Jong
Image
It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write.
Erica Jong
Image
Every time I catch myself saying, Oh no, you shouldn't try that, I think, Yes, I should.
Erica Jong
Image
You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
Erica Jong
Image
We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.
Erica Jong
Image
There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.
Erica Jong
Image
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?
Erica Jong