Quotes By Erica Jong

He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.

It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.

Men and women, women and men. It will never work.

Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?

Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?

I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.

I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.

When I was a ten-year old bookworm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons, it used to amaze me that these remote people could provoke me to love.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

I remember everything but forgive anyway.

Women are not the richer sex. Women are not equal in society.

When I met my husband, I refused to invite him home for Passover because I was embarrassed my mother might serve all the catered dishes in the wrong order.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.

I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to somewhere life is cheaper.

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.

Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.

If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving - instead of actually getting up and leaving.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

Solitude is un-American.

Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.