Jong Quotes & Sayings

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

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage-however often we are hurt as a result of it. — Erica Jong

Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint. — Erica Jong

And the trouble is, if you risk nothing, you risk even more ... — Erica Jong

When you become an adult, you get to choose your path. You take all the things you learned while you were on everyone else's and use it to build your own, but it's about where you heart wants to go. It's all up to you. — Lisa De Jong

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past. — Erica Jong

So there were people who got up at noon, pared their toenails, and sat naked in hotel rooms without regarding each day as an apocalypse. Amazing! If someone had burst into my room and found me naked and paring my nails, I would have died of shock. Or would I? Maybe I was stronger than I thought. — Erica Jong

Imperialist aid is a noose of plunder and subjugation, aimed at robbing 10 and even 100 things for one thing that is given. — Kim Jong Il

I believe that there's a force of life in the universe, and that when we're writing or making music or painting, we're likely to connect with that flow. — Erica Jong

Just after Kim Jong Il's death, the official news agency put out an article saying that under Kim Jong Il's rule, the people had been like naive children without a care in the world. — Brian Reynolds Myers

Women are individuals in parenting, and why not? — Erica Jong

I am the only high-ranking U.S. official to ever meet with Kim Jong-il, and we are the same height and both wear high heels. — Madeleine Albright

Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I'm doing something right. — Erica Jong

The aim of my writing is to utterly remove the distance between author and reader so that the book becomes a sort of semipermeable membrane through which feelings, ideas, nutrients pass ... — Erica Jong

I see the whole episode in my memory as if it were a very crisply photographed black and white movie. Directed by Bergman perhaps.We are playing ourselves in the movie version. If only we could escape from always having to play ourselves ! — Erica Jong

One writes not by will but by surrender. — Erica Jong

Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life. — Erica Jong

Sometimes when life hits you with too much, it makes you stronger and you learn from it. I know where I want to go while some of my friends don't. Life has brought me maturity. I make my decisions based on who I don't want to be, rather than whom everyone else wants me to be. I always want to be better. It took me time to see this, but it's true. — Lisa De Jong

It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them. — Erica Jong

I had been a feminist all my life, but the big problem was how to make your feminism jibe with you unappeasable hunger for male bodies. — Erica Jong

Always have your own opinion and belief. — Kim Jong-hyun

Cry out loud once. Look at the mirror & shake it off. I've cried like that before & others will have times like that too. Cheer up. You're not alone. — Kim Jong-hyun

The industrial revolution in the new century is, in essence, a scientific and technological revolution, and breaking through the cutting edge is a shortcut to the building of an economic giant. — Kim Jong-un

To be honest, there were alot of talks about SS501. Alot of talks like how there was only Kim Hyun Joong enough in SS501, etc.. Hyunjoong-hyung, as well as our other members were very hurt — Kim Kyu-jong

So little for a woman is permissible- yet on her back every human climbs to adulthood. — Janet Benton

Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child. — Erica Jong

Do you really want to waste your precious time doing things that are neither important nor urgent? — Eddie De Jong

What storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank. — Erica Jong

Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember? — Erica Jong

Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations. — Erica Jong

Eating is never so simple as hunger. — Erica Jong

Up until the end of the Bush Administration, there was indifference to the North Korean suffering under Kim Jong-Il. — Ed Royce

Why does God always have to take the best? — Lisa De Jong

You merely pass the time, making millennia fly by. — Erica Jong

Life's most beautiful moments come after the rain." -Beau Bennett — Lisa De Jong

In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap, our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us. — Erica Jong

Women in America read 'lifestyle' pages which are really glorifications of shopping. They teach us we must veil ourselves in make-up to be loved. And we willingly take the veil, thinking ourselves freed by it. Make-up is no more optional for us than the veil is for Arab women: it is our Western version of the chador. — Erica Jong

Always do what you like, do what you want, and try your best to be happy. — Moon Jong-up

Never feel lonely with you," said Bean when they stopped kissing. "I keep expecting to feel lonely or shut out or irritated, but the more we are together, the more right it feels, the more we seem to belong together." Isadora felt the same, but she feared admitting it. She feared the commitment it implied, she feared the heartbreak, the entanglement that leads to bitter loss. Bean waited for her to pledge herself to him in turn, but she remained silent through fear and the recentness of her heartbreak. — Erica Jong

Even though we can't communicate using the same language, we use music instead. — Kim Jong-hyun

You want to be a poet and not die. — Erica Jong

You have to enjoy being a woman. Why should being a woman be such a negative thing where you always have to improve yourself? I have never in my entire life met a man who didn't want to go to bed with me because I was too fat. — Erica Jong

I don't think that sex necessarily produces intimacy. — Erica Jong

I love to go to sleep, when bed takes me like a lover — Erica Jong

Motherhood cannot finally be delegated. Breast-feeding may succumb to the bottle; cuddling, fondling, and paediatric visits may also be done by fathers ... but when a child needs a mother to talk to, nobody else but a mother will do. — Erica Jong

A Soul is partly given, partly wrought; remember always that you are the Maker of your own Soul. — Erica Jong

I am old enough to know that laughter, not anger, is the true revelation. — Erica Jong

What makes a Man love Death, Fanny? Is it because he hopes to avert his own by watchin' the Deaths of others? Doth he hope to devour Death by devourin' Executions with his Eyes? I'll ne'er understand it, if I live to be eight hundred Years. The Human Beast is more Beast than Human, 'tis true ... — Erica Jong

I quickly learned that a book carefully arranged before your face was a bulletproof shield, an asbestos wall, a cloak of invisibility. I learned to take refuge behind books, to become, as my mother and father called me, 'the absentminded professor-' They screamed at me, but I couldn't hear. I was reading. I was writing. I was safe. — Erica Jong

The social construction of public administration concerns itself less with how policy — Jong S. Jun

The unconscious of an artist is her greatest treasure. It is what transmutes the dross of autobiography into the gold of myth. — Erica Jong

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

I don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish. — Erica Jong

Good sex is a mystery. Perhaps humping and pumping is not a mystery, but good sex is a mystery, and how human beings become truly intimate remains a mystery. — Erica Jong

It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously. — Erica Jong

You have Kim Jong Il, and you have his brother, Menta Lee Il. — David Letterman

Is this the reality you wanted?! — Kim Jong-hyun

The ultimate sexist put-down: the prick which lies down on the job. The ultimate weapon in the war between the sexes: the limp prick. The banner of the enemy's encampment: the prick at half-mast. The symbol of the apocalypse: the atomic warhead prick which self-destructs. That was the basic inequity which could never be righted: not that the male had a wonderful added attraction called a penis, but that the female had a wonderful all-weather cunt. Neither storm nor sleet nor dark of night could faze it. It was always there, always ready. Quite terrifying, when you think about it. No wonder men hated women. No wonder they invented the myth of female inadequacy. — Erica Jong

I wish that I am a star, shining for every TripleS in every corner of the earth. — Kim Kyu-jong

As women, we can't look old. We can't be fat. We're supposed to look like the 14-year-old models in Vogue, who are younger and younger and skinnier and skinnier, and they are air-brushed and contoured and Photoshopped. — Erica Jong

My grandchildren are fabulous and funny. — Erica Jong

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

Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable. — Erica Jong

The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself. — Erica Jong

Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly. — Erica Jong

Readers who think I have answers when all I have are a few pointed questions ... — Erica Jong

The core in the Juche outlook on the revolution is loyalty to the party and the leader. The cause of socialism and communism is started by the leader and is carried out under the guidance of the party and the leader. — Kim Jong Il

I learned a long time ago that most of my family and friends had plastic hearts. Plastic hearts are made so they cannot be broken. Cracked maybe, but never broken. — Lisa De Jong

Happy birthday to evil North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He gathered family and friends together and celebrated by executing a few close friends. — David Letterman

The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth. — Adam Johnson

Why is it so hard to be human being? I wonder. Why do we have to surrender? And to what? What if you refused to believe in a higher power? What if you thought you were the only trustworthy higher power? I have done that all my life and I know it doesn't work. You are not enough. Your will is not enough. But God? God is a pagan dream, conjured out of neediness. — Erica Jong

We came to realize how little married couples see of each other once they crawl in the bourgeois box. — Erica Jong

What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation. — Erica Jong

Make a conscious decision, no matter what it is, and know that that choice will have consequences. — Eddie De Jong

Each day that I don't write I get more fragmented. — Erica Jong

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed. — Erica Jong

As we don't live in a perfect world, try to spend 80% of your time doing important but not urgent activities — Eddie De Jong

As a seasoned insomniac, I knew sometimes the way to beat sleeplessness was to outwit it: to pretend you didn't care about sleeping. Then sometimes sleep became piqued, like a rejected lover, and crept up to try to seduce you. — Erica Jong

Love isn't about what you have or who you know. It's about how you earn what you have and how you treat those you love. — Lisa De Jong

In freeing myself from the romantic dream of finding another man to come along and rescue me, I learned that no one can rescue me except myself. — Erica Jong

Allow me to put the record straight. I am forty-six and have been for some years past. — Erica Jong

Our Party's Songun-based revolutionary leadership, Songun-based politics, is a revolutionary mode of leadership and socialist mode of politics that gives top priority to military affairs, and defends the country, the revolution and socialism and dynamically pushes ahead with overall socialist construction by dint of the revolutionary mettle and combat capabilities of the People's Army. — Kim Jong Il

When it rain, think of me. I'll be your umbrella, Kate. I'll be your barrier from the storm, when life gets too heavy. Don't let the storm wash you away. Allow it to nourish new life. — Lisa De Jong

It's up to Kim Jong Il to make that decision, and we can't make that for him. — Mitchell Reiss

There is a rhythm to the ending ... — Erica Jong

There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes. — Erica Jong

I look forward and see myself look back. — Erica Jong

I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me. — Erica Jong

Yet early on in the marriage I found myself
despite all my self-promises
drifting into the role of wife: focusing on the renovations of the apartment, doing silly little domestic things instead of writing, using the wife role as cop-out from my work, my work which had always involved me in so much controversy and which some part of me longed to retreat from ... Even when I was forty-seven, full of my own power, my own identity, something in me wanted to escape from the fray and dwindle into a wife. It seemed to comfy, so safe. — Erica Jong

There are very few persons who would think of inquiring into the private life of the newspaper dealer at the corner, or the druggist, or the doctor, or even a Mah Jong partner, but the moment one belongs to the theatrical profession, the public usually feels cheated unless it knows one's inmost thoughts of love. — Marie Dressler

Friends love misery ... our misery is what endears us to our friends. — Erica Jong

People are terrified. A lot of them are in relationships that aren't satisfying, and if you tell them they can change their life, they get really scared. — Erica Jong

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one. — Erica Jong

You go through life looking for a teacher and then when you find him, you become so dependent on him that you grow to hate him. Or else you wait for him to show his weakness and then you despise him for being human. — Erica Jong

I have nothing against the North Koreans but this Kim Jong Un has got a screw loose. A member of his cabinet, his security minister, nods off, falls sleep. We've all done it. Kim Jong Un takes the guy out and has him executed, just for just falling asleep. Oh, and he was also deflating footballs. — David Letterman

A wet dream in the mind of New York. — Erica Jong

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

I prefer to work in the morning. I get up now at five in the morning. In the morning is when I feel freshest. — Erica Jong

Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile. — Erica Jong

It was an aspiring neighbourhood that retained a faint edge of slum, typical of Shanghai. Pensioners in Mao-era padded jackets would sit on doorsteps playing mah-jong, oblivious to the Prada-clad girls sweeping past on their way to work. — Hyeonseo Lee