A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive. — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them. — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match. — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
The hardest part is believing in yourself at the notebook stage. It is like believing in dreams in the morning. — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it's a wonderful way to spend one's life. — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone. — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
Writers tend to be addicted to houses ... We work at home, indulging the agoraphobia endemic to our kind. We are immersed… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
“Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
I've kept journals at many times in my life starting from when I was about 13 or 14. But it's boring and… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
The only rule I have when writing is to try to tell the truth. That doesn't mean you can't exaggerate, edit, rewrite… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
I am never so calm as after I have written. And the next morning I will feel the familiar anxiety and I… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
When I was a ten-year old bookworm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons,… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
“All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you'll… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do. It's really dangerous and… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
it is not unusual to hate great writers before we learn to love them. Because they have created something that did not… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
“I quickly learned that a book carefully arranged before your face was a bulletproof shield, an asbestos wall, a cloak of invisibility.… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good,… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
But we should ask the question: Why should a writer be more than a writer? Why should a writer be a guru?… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets. — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write. — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
Nothing you write is ever lost to you. At some other level your mind is working on it. — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
I don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish. — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
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… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
I am not quite sure how writing changes things, but I know that it does. It is indirect-like the trails of earthworms… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
It was unimaginable what happens to you when you get known for a book that everybody reads, or that everybody has heard… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
What a damnably lonely profession writing is! In order to do it, one must banish the world, and having banished it, one… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
“It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the… — Erica Jong Copy Share
Will you ever? I dont think you will ever fully understand how you've touched my life and made me who I am.I don't think… — Erica Jong Copy Share
Give advice to your children while they're young enough to believe you know what you're talking about. — Erica Jong Copy Share
Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household. — Erica Jong Copy Share
I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it. — Erica Jong Copy Share
I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to… — Erica Jong Copy Share
“Naomi Wolf dares to explode the myth of 'victim feminism' and pleads for allowing women to be as full of good and bad desires… — Erica Jong Copy Share
The Lives of Great Men are more oft' at variance with their profess'd Phillosophies than consistent with 'em. — Erica Jong Copy Share
Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If… — Erica Jong Copy Share
Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart. — Erica Jong Copy Share
