1
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.Erica Jong
2
I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.Erica Jong
3
Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.Erica Jong
4
Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.Erica Jong
5
You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.Erica Jong
6
Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married.Erica Jong
7
We came to realize how little married couples see of each other once they crawl in the bourgeois box.Erica Jong
8
Maybe marriages are best in middle age. When all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you're going to die anyway.Erica Jong
9
The virtues about marriage were mostly negative virtues. Being unmarried in a man's world was such a hassle that anything had to be better. Marriage was better. But not much. Damned clever, I thought, how men had made life so intolerable for single women that most would gladly embrace even bad marriages instead.Erica Jong
10
We're programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You're supposed to work and suffer - and the trouble is: you believe it.Erica Jong
11
It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present, how much of daily life is usually spent making plans and attempting to control the future. Never mind that you have no control over it. The idea of the future is our greatest entertainment, amusement, and time-killer.Erica Jong
12
Tears are a form of communication - like speech - and require a listener.Erica Jong
13
It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.Erica Jong
14
There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but having no outlet, it implodes in a great fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.Erica Jong
15
There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.Erica Jong
16
In a certain sense, you do write to seduce the world, but when it happens, you begin to feel like a whore. The disparity between your life and your work turns out to be as great as ever. And the people seduced by your work are usually seduced by all the wrong reasons.Erica Jong
17
There's nothing good about being ordinary. People don't respect you for it. People run after people who are different, who have confidence in their own taste, who don't run with the herd. There is nothing gained by giving in to the pressures of group vulgarity.Erica Jong