Erica Jong
Erica Jong
Erica Jongis an American novelist and poet, known particularly for her 1973 novel Fear of Flying. The book became famously controversial for its attitudes towards female sexuality and figured prominently in the development of second-wave feminism. According to Washington Post, it has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 March 1942
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.
When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it's a wonderful way to spend one's life.
Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.
Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I'm doing something right.
Generations of women have sacrificed their lives to become their mothers. But we do not have that luxury any more. The world has changed too much to let us have the lives our mothers had. And we can no longer afford the guilt we feel at not being our mothers. We cannot afford any guilt that pulls us back to the past. We have to grow up, whether we want to or not. We have to stop blaming men and mothers and seize every second of our lives with passion. We can no longer afford to waste our creativity. We cannot afford spiritual laziness.
Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.
I remember everything but forgive anyway.
Men and women, women and men. It will never work.
I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.
You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.
Back in the days when men were hunters and chest beaters and women spent their whole lives worrying about pregnancy or dying in childbirth, they often had to be taken against their will. Men complained that women were cold, unresponsive, frigid. They wanted their women wanton. They wanted their women wild. Now women were finally learning to be wanton and wild - and what happened? The men wilted.
Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.
It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.
I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.