Erica Jong Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• 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

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  erica jong “fear of flying”

• If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Listening, Important

• I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged...I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Years, Finishing

• Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.

  Erica Jong

  Home, Writing, Reality

• Blocks usually stem from fear of being judged. If you imagine the world is listening, you'll never write a line.

  Erica Jong

  Block, Writing, Inspire

• Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Heart, Exercise

• I am not quite sure how writing changes things, but I know that it does. It is indirect-like the trails of earthworms aerating the earth. It is not always deliberate-like the tails of glowing dust dragged by comets.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Glowing, Dust

  Erica Jong (1999). “What Do Women Want?: Bread, Roses, Sex, Power”, Perennial

• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Way

  Charlotte Templin, Erica Jong (2002). “Conversations with Erica Jong”, p.130, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Voice, Giving

• I've kept journals at many times in my life starting from when I was about 13 or 14. But it's boring and contrived to keep a journal every day. Better to write as the mood strikes.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Diaries, Boring

• I tried to keep myself away from him by using con words like "fidelity" and "adultery", by telling myself that he would interfere with my work, that I had him I'd be too happy to write. I tried to tell myself I was hurting Bennett, hurting myself, making a spectacle of myself. I was. But nothing helped. I was possessed. The minute he walked into a room and smiled at me, I was a goner.

  Erica Jong

  Hurt, Writing, Rooms

• You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Knowing, Beginners

• 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.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Thinking, Who I Am

• 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 somewhere life is cheaper.

  Erica Jong

  Moving, Teaching, Writing

• There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Class, Feelings

• I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.

  Erica Jong

  Character, Writing, Thinking

• We write poems / as leaves give oxygen - / so we can breathe.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Oxygen, Giving

• Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do. It's really dangerous and ultimately destroys you as a writer if you start thinking about responses to your work or what your audience needs.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Responsibility, Thinking

  Charlotte Templin, Erica Jong (2002). “Conversations with Erica Jong”, p.7, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• The only rule I have when writing is to try to tell the truth. That doesn't mean you can't exaggerate, edit, rewrite things to make them more dramatic. But emotional truth is what I look for in writing.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Mean, Emotional

• When I'm sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it's silence and despair! It's not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Silence, Despair

• It takes a spasm of love to write a poem.

  Erica Jong

  Writing

  Erica Jong (1995). “How to Save Your Own Life”, N A L Trade

• Writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.

  Erica Jong

  Sex, Writing, Turns

  FaceBook post by Erica Jong from Mar 14, 2013

• One writes not by will but by surrender.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Surrender

  Erica Jong (1999). “What Do Women Want?: Bread, Roses, Sex, Power”, Perennial

• I think poetry is the best thing I do. It's certainly the purest. I seem to switch gears without too much trouble. Non-fiction is in many ways the easiest to write.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Thinking, Fiction

• 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 it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.

  Erica Jong

  Art, Book, Writing

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