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
I knew I was in England by the smell.
Keeping a journal implies hope.
If you apologize for something that isn't your fault in the first place, you, in effect, confirm their belief that it is your fault.
Writers tend to be addicted to houses ... We work at home, indulging the agoraphobia endemic to our kind. We are immersed in our surroundings to an almost morbid degree.
we write as if our lives depended upon it. They do.
writers do not choose their subjects; their subjects choose them.
it is not unusual to hate great writers before we learn to love them. Because they have created something that did not yet exist, they must also create their audience. Sometimes the audience is not yet ready. Sometimes it has yet to be born.
What a damnably lonely profession writing is! In order to do it, one must banish the world, and having banished it, one feels cosmically alone.
[Henry Miller] was such a scribomaniac that even when he lived in the same house as Lawrence Durrell they often exchanged letters. For most of his life, Henry wrote literally dozens of letters a day to people he could have easily engaged in conversation - and did. The writing process, in short, was essential. As it is to all real writers, writing was life and breath to him. He put out words as a tree puts out leaves.
The dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.
If we don't risk anything, we risk even more.
Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.
Nothing you write is ever lost to you. At some other level your mind is working on it.
The bruise on the heart which at first feels incredibly tender to the slightest touch eventually turns all the shades of the rainbow and stops aching. We forget about it. We even forget we have hearts until the next time. And then we wonder how we ever could have forgotten. We think this one is better, because, in fact, we cannot fully remember the time before.