Quote

If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.

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
Best
Dying
Always
Careers
World
Move
Woman
Moving
Uppity
Young
Disdains
Women
Disdain
Anything
Career

More quotes by Erica Jong

Image
I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.
Erica Jong
Image
Women who bear children before they establish serious habits of work, may never establish them at all.
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
Writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.
Erica Jong
Image
What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave.
Erica Jong
Image
The absolute bedrock of our independence is having control over our own bodies. You cannot be independent if the government or someone else says whether or not you can use birth control. Unless you're in charge of your body, you're not in charge of anything. I think that's really the bottom line of feminism.
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
The camera creates a magical transformation. It's not enough to exist we must chronicle that existence. ... Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don't feel any experience is complete unless it's recorded.
Erica Jong
Image
Keeping a journal implies hope.
Erica Jong
Image
I remember everything but forgive anyway.
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
I don't believe in organized religion. I believe that people should try to connect with their own life force and let it lead them to do with their lives what they will find satisfying.
Erica Jong
Image
Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need them at the times when they need them ... Cosmic forces guide such passings-along.
Erica Jong
Image
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
Erica Jong
Image
Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.
Erica Jong
Image
Great loves have legs and wings. They are substantial. They do not dissapate so easily... Great loves have staying power. Or so I told myself.
Erica Jong
Image
I think feminism means what it has always meant - women want to use all their gifts, all their talents and be judged impartially for them. I don't think feminism has ever meant anything else.
Erica Jong
Image
Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
Erica Jong
Image
writers do not choose their subjects their subjects choose them.
Erica Jong
Image
we need poetry most at those moments when life astounds us with losses, gains, or celebrations. We need it most when we are most hurt, most happy, most downcast, most jubilant. Poetry is the language we speak in times of greatest need. And the fact that it is an endangered species in our culture tells us that we are in deep trouble.
Erica Jong