Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love. -Erica Jong Poetry
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads. -Erica Jong Courage
Famous people complain about fame, but they never want to give it back, myself included. -Erica Jong Famous
What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave. -Erica Jong Poetry
Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan. -Erica Jong Poetry
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 Legal
Often I find that poems predict what I'm going to do later in my own writing, and often I find that poems predict my life. So I think poetry is the most intense expression of feeling that we have. -Erica Jong Poetry
No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks. -Erica Jong Wisdom
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 Poetry
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness. -Erica Jong Equality
You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy. -Erica Jong Women
I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It's the source of my creativity. -Erica Jong Poetry
In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies, when they fall in love. -Erica Jong Poetry
The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise. -Erica Jong Famous
