Erica Jong

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

Erica Jong

Women tend to be preservers of the social structure, of marriage. They don’t want to upset their husbands or their significant others. They don’t want to hurt people.

Erica Jong

Women who bear children before they establish serious habits of work, may never establish them at all.

Erica Jong

Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.

Erica Jong

Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do. It’s really dangerous and ultimately destroys you as a writer if you start thinking about responses to your work or what your audience needs.

Erica Jong

You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare.

Erica Jong

You don’t get to choose what you get famous for and you don’t get to control which of your life’s many struggles gets to stand for you.

Erica Jong

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

Erica Jong

Young women dream of romance and passion as men dream of conquest because those dreams are necessary goads to leaving home and growing up.

Erica Jong