Quote

Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.

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
Happens
Ritual
Seems
Divorce
Anything
Generation
Generations
Seem
Scarring
Coming
Bearable
Age
Afterward
Makes
Ceremony

More quotes by Erica Jong

Image
It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.
Erica Jong
Image
No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Erica Jong
Image
Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.
Erica Jong
Image
It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
Erica Jong
Image
If we don't risk anything, we risk even more.
Erica Jong
Image
If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.
Erica Jong
Image
Motherhood cannot finally be delegated. Breast-feeding may succumb to the bottle cuddling, fondling, and paediatric visits may also be done by fathers...but when a child needs a mother to talk to, nobody else but a mother will do.
Erica Jong
Image
The dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.
Erica Jong
Image
biography is essentially a collaborative art, the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.
Erica Jong
Image
Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
Erica Jong
Image
The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.
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
In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving -instead of actually getting up and leaving.
Erica Jong
Image
The perfect man is the true partner. Not a bed partner nor a fun partner, but a man who will shoulder burdens equally with you and possess that quality of joy.
Erica Jong
Image
Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.
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
Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.
Erica Jong
Image
In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap, our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us.
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
Image
Perhaps every generation thinks of itself as a lost generation and perhaps every generation is right.
Erica Jong