652 Quotes by Erica Jong

Why should a bad marriage have been so much more compelling than no marriage? Why had I clung to my misery so? Why did I believe it was all I had?

Feminism is teaching. I’ve gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I’ve met and worked with.

Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can’t function without it.

Novices in the arts think you have to start with inspiration to write or paint or compose. In fact, you only have to start. Inspiration comes if you continue. Make the commitment to sit still in solitude several hours a day and inevitably your muse will visit.

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.

You don’t have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.

It is heresy in America to embrace any way of life except as half of a couple. Solitude is un-American.

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

As long as women are denied the priesthood, we will try to make our own rituals at our own kitchen altars and we will sew our own magical capes at our own sewing machines.