Erica Jong

In a certain sense, you do write to seduce the world, but when it happens, you begin to feel like a whore. The disparity between your life and your work turns out to be as great as ever. And the people seduced by your work are usually seduced by all the wrong reasons.

Erica Jong

In a world not made for women, criticism and ridicule follow us all the days of our lives. Usually they are indications that we are doing something right.

Erica Jong

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

In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies, when they fall in love.

Erica Jong

Isadora is right. We all want connection.

Erica Jong

Isn’t it our job to be appalled by our parents? Isn’t it every generation’s duty to be dismayed by the previous generation? And to assert that we are different – only to discover later that we are distressingly the same?

Erica Jong

It is not surprising that Venice is known above all for mirrors and glass since Venice is the most narcissistic city in the world, the city that celebrates self-mirroring.

Erica Jong

It is the artists who make the true value of the world, though at times they may have to starve to do it. They are like earthworms, turning up the soil so things can grow, eating dirt so that the rest of us may eat green shoots.

Erica Jong

It was unimaginable what happens to you when you get known for a book that everybody reads, or that everybody has heard of. If the book is said to be sexy, the crazies come out of the woodwork.

Erica Jong

It’s easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.

Erica Jong