Erica Jong Quotes

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.

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

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

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

If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.

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

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

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

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

Solitude is un-American.