Erica Jong Quotes

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

Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women … they are said to be dealing with ‘cosmic, major concerns’ – but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing ‘women’s fiction’ or ‘women’s poetry.

One writes not by will but by surrender.

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.

My generation had Doris Day as a role model, then Gloria Steinem–then Princess Diana. We are the most confused generation.

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

It’s only when you’re forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present.

Nothing you write is ever lost to you. At some other level your mind is working on it.

The problem with feminism in the second wave was that we fought so much among ourselves, and I think we did so much damage to the movement… and I think the next wave, the third wave, is women mentoring younger women and women helping younger women to enter the political process and the writing world.

At certain historic moments, grandparents took on childrearing responsibilities. In many cultures, they still do. Chinese grandparents who are able to retire at 55 are seen all over Beijing bouncing grandbabies. In the United States, we can’t afford to retire at 55.

Men must be stripped of arrogance and women must become independent for any mutually nurturing alliance to endure between the sexes.