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've never been able to control my public image.
I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It's the source of my creativity.
The sexuality doesn't end. It really doesn't. You're sexual your whole life, if you're a sexual person.
I am old enough to know that laughter, not anger, is the true revelation.
My generation of young female writers discovered that we could dictate the form and content of our own fiction.
Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.
writers do not choose their subjects; their subjects choose them.
What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave.
It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.
I remember everything but forgive anyway.
Throughout much of history, women writers have capitulated to male standards, and have paid too much heed to what Virginia Woolf calls "the angel in the house." She is that little ghost who sits on one's shoulder while one writes and whispers, "Be nice, don't say anything that will embarrass the family, don't say anything your man will disapprove of ..." [ellipsis in original] The "angel in the house" castrates one's creativity because it deprives one of essential honesty, and many women writers have yet to win the freedom to be honest with themselves.
Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile.
what was time but a convention, a habit of mind, a custom of dress?
each of us only feels the torn lining of his own coat and sees the wholeness of the other person's.