Jong Quotes

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

You can change your life and make it what you want it to be, but only if you take consistent action. ~ Eddie De Jong

Then there was David, lording it up at Buckingham Palace, thinking he was king of the shit heap. That guy was definitely nuts, like every dictator that had gone before him. Nero, Caligula, Henry the Eighth, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Margaret Thatcher, Colonel Gaddafi, that crazy North Korean bastard who was in Team America, Kim Jong whatever. ~ Charlie Higson

Underneath it all, you longed to be annihilated by love ... ~ Erica Jong

But I am wise if not yet quite old, wanting the poem more than the lover, wanting words more than the sticky dew men secrete in their private places. ~ 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

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

Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads. ~ Erica Jong

Many, many people have done a lot more sexual experimentation than I have. ~ Erica Jong

What I liked about working with Palmbomen and him being a super crate digger and super well known with all this exotic and unfamiliar music to me. ~ Sam De Jong

When I was a little girl, I believed in fairy tales and one of the dreams I had was someday dancing alongside my prince. Asher's that guy for me. He's my dream and my wish come true. He's my prince. ~ Lisa De Jong

Glitch or not, we seem to need a power greater than ourselves. We seem to need enormous shadows of divinity stalking us. We know we are weak. Alcoholics are, above all, lonely, fearful pepole who make a fetish of loneliness, who think they
we
are too good to be part of the human race. And we have to be humbled to remember who we are
stumbling human beings, more ape than angel. ~ 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

Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women. ~ Erica Jong

If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair. ~ Erica Jong

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

Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine - some estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone - but the rotund, jowly face of Kim Il Sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustered to applaud him. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The accession to power in Pyongyang of Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il and grandson of Kim Il Sung, is a unique achievement in world politics. ~ Elliott Abrams

When I looked at you, I didn't see the girl I wanted to share my first kiss with, I saw the girl I wanted to share every kiss with. ~ Lisa De Jong

You can easily have more time available in your life to do what is important to you ~ Eddie De Jong

I have ne'er been in a chamber with a lawyer when I did not wish either to scream with desperation or else fall into the deepest of sleeps, e'en when the matter concern'd my own future most profoundly. ~ Erica Jong

I've not ceased being fearful, I've gone ahead despite the pounding in my heart that says: turn back, turn back, you'll die if you go too far. ~ Erica Jong

There are some moments in life we all have to face, even though we don't want to. ~ Lisa De Jong

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

I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly. ~ Erica Jong

Things that were never together weren't meant to be fixed. ~ Lisa De Jong

I had forgotten how awful it was to be a woman alone
the leering glances, the catcalls, the offers of help which you dared not accept for fear of incurring a sexual debt. The awful sense of vulnerability. No wonder I had gone from man to man and always wound up married. How could I have left Bennett? How could I have forgotten? ~ Erica Jong

Beware of the man who denounces psychiatrists; / he is afraid. ~ Erica Jong

The perfect man is the true partner. Not a bed partner nor a fun partner, but a man who will shoulder burdens equally with you and possess that quality of joy. ~ Erica Jong

Watching TV together does not count as dedicated family time! ~ Eddie De Jong

Life is full of chances. Take it lightly. ~ Kim Jong-hyun

Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life. ~ 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

The Lives of Great Men are more oft' at variance with their profess'd Phillosophies than consistent with 'em ... ~ Erica Jong

In a sane world, love and sex would not divide by gender. We could love like and unlike beings, love them for a variety of reasons. The battered adjectives for homosexuality
queer, lesbian, gay
would disappear and we would only have people making love in different ways, with different body parts. We are too far gone with overpopulation to insist that procreation be an immutable part of desire. Desire needs only itself, not the proof of a baby. We would do well to baby each other instead of making all these unwanted babies that no one has time to nurture or to love.
At this point in my life, I am blessed by my friendships with women. I make no distinction between my gay and straight women friends. I hat the very terms, feeling that any of us could be anything
if we were to unlock the full range of possibilities within. ~ Erica Jong

There's another part of getting older that's just wonderful. Which is you see the way the stories turn out with peoples' lives. ~ Erica Jong

She lives as if she is constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away "from all this". All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else? ~ Erica Jong

You can't walk through life using someone else's plan. ~ Lisa De Jong

We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion. ~ Erica Jong

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

A DOZEN PHALLACIES WOMEN BUY
Phallacy 3.
If you use your power to support a man, he'll always support you.
Truth
Alas, not true. It's wonderful to stand by your man, to give to the one you love, but you must never forget yourself, and your children, since he may. Being a man, he takes for granted that his needs come first. Being a woman, you take that for granted too. Don't. Protect yourself -- not with feminist rhetoric or argument, but with actions. A bank account and real estate in your own name, money put aside for your kids' education that he can't touch (or give to the next -- younger -- wife and her spawn), a profession of your own to rely on. Above all, empower yourself, and then help empower him if it pleases you to do so. ~ Erica Jong

What all the ads and whorescopes seemed to imply was that if only you took proper care of your smells, your hair, your boobs, your eyelashes, your armpits, your crotch, your stars, your scars, your choice of Scotch in bars - you would meet a beautiful powerful, potent, and rich man who would satisfy every longing, fill every hole, make your heart skip a beat (or stand still), make you misty, and fly you to the moon (preferably on gossamer wings), where you would live totally satisfied forever. ~ Erica Jong

When you open your heart to someone, you're also exposing it to pain. ~ Lisa De Jong

she died of internal weeping ~ Erica Jong

I will help people become the best that they can be. ~ Eddie De Jong

Every time women make tremendous strides, the right wing gets terrified and creates laws making it hard to get an abortion or birth control. ~ Erica Jong

I believe I belong to the last literary generation, the last generation, that is, for whom books are a religion. ~ Erica Jong

I don't think there's just one person for everyone. It would be very hard for me to be with a guy who was not bright or funny. And he'd have to see the absurdities of the world, not exactly as I see them necessarily. ~ Erica Jong

Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms! ~ Erica Jong

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

We find our calling or it finds us, and it's a sin against the fates not to use your talent when you have it. ~ Erica Jong

It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write. ~ Erica Jong

I find myself wondering how many other memories are hidden from me in the recesses of my own brain; indeed my own brain will seem to be the last great terra incognita, and I will be filled with wonder at the prospect of some day discovering new worlds there. Imagine the lost continent of Atlantis and all the submerged islands of childhood right there waiting to be found. The inner space we have never adequately explored. The worlds within worlds within worlds. And the marvelous thing is that they are waiting for us. If we fail to discover them, it is only because we haven't yet built the right vehicle - spaceship or submarine or poem - which will take us to them.
It's for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write? My writing is the submarine or spaceship which takes me to the unknown worlds within my head. And the adventure is endless and inexhaustible. If I learn to build the right vehicle, then I can discover even more territories. And each new poem is a new vehicle, designed to delve a little deeper (or fly a little higher) than the one before. ~ Erica Jong

North Korea is a necrocracy, or a mauselocracy or a thanatocracy in which the one [Kim Il-sung] is diffused into being with the other [Kim Jong Il], and where both of them are said to have had miraculous births attended by miraculous phenomena such as, for example, birds singing in Korean, when they were born. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Mistakes make us who we are. ~ Lisa De Jong

Don't presume that your loved ones know that you love them - say it, and say it often! ~ Eddie De Jong

I have enormous pride in the survival of the Jewish people, the cultural heritage of the Jewish people, but I'm not observant, and I don't belong to a synagogue. I don't go to temple on high holy days, but I'm proud to be Jewish. ~ Erica Jong

What we remember lacks the hard edge of fact. To help us along we create little fictions, highly subtle and individual scenarios which clarify and shape our experience. The remembered event becomes a fiction, a structure made to accommodate certain feelings. This is obvious to me. If it weren't for these structures, art would be too personal for the artist to create, much less for the audience to grasp. Even film, the most literal of all the arts, is edited. - Jerzy Kosinski ~ Erica Jong

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

But at the bottom of all the gloom, there is a sense that we are responsible for each other
if not for each other's happiness. There is empathy, admiration, respect for the other's intelligence and honesty. ~ Erica Jong

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

The body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god's messenger. ~ 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

Most sex is not really intimate. ~ Erica Jong

Each one an antidote to the one that went before. Each one a reaction, an about-face, a rebound. ~ Erica Jong

The physical life of an individual person is limited, but the life of the masses united as an independent social-political organism is immortal ... Only when an individual becomes a member of this community can he acquire the immortal social-political life. ~ Kim Jong Il

I think if I could move away from here to a place where no one knows me, I might have a chance at happiness, but I can't do that either. There's a comfort in staying home...but there's so much agony, too. ~ Lisa De Jong

Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army! ~ Kim Jong Il

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

I think men have always been afraid of women's sexuality, and the restrictions they put on women testify to that. ~ Erica Jong

Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That's one reason old men can send them to war. ~ Erica Jong

We all have fantasies about sex that are more perfect than anything in reality. ~ Erica Jong

Mothers and daughters
it's a comedy, but also a tragedy. We fill our daughters with all the chutzpah we wish for ourselves. We want them to be free as we were not. And then we resent them for being so free. We resent them for being what we have made! With granddaughters, it's so much easier. And great-granddaughters. ~ Erica Jong

We must work with the Australians, the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Filipinos to contain China. And then we must ask for their support and their help with North Korea. Because believe it or not, China is as concerned about Kim Jong-Un as we are. ~ Carly Fiorina

Evaluate everything that you do, and decide if it serves or hinders you in becoming the best that you can be. ~ Eddie De Jong

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

You gave me my life back. You cared about me enough to push back my demons. You made me want to be with you every minute of the day because you made me feel things that no one else could. And whether you're lying beside me or living in my memories, I will love you. Forever. Always. ~ Lisa De Jong

I'm an Internet expert too. It's all right to wire the industrial zone only, but there are many problems if other regions of the North are wired. ~ Kim Jong Il

A man assumes that a woman's refusal is just part of a game. Or, at any rate, a lot of men assume that. When a man says no, it's no. When a woman says no, it's yes, or at least maybe. There is even a joke to that effect. And little by little, women begin to believe in this view of themselves. ~ Erica Jong

Jung Min is SS501's Hitler. When we lived together, we played video games. But we can't turn the sound loud. Not even by one click. Jung Min says we can't have it loud, so we're like "Ok, fine. He's our member, so let's be understanding and turn it down." We turn it off, but he goes to his room and does karaoke! ~ Kim Kyu-jong

A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart. ~ Erica Jong

My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings. ~ Erica Jong

Whoever pushes America's sex button must be prepared for sirens and alarms. Whatever else we do in our lives will be drowned out by them. ~ Erica Jong

Hyung Jun snores a lot and bites his nails. ~ Kim Kyu-jong

But we [women] are only at the beginning [of revamping feminism]. And our strictures on each other prove this. Our enforcement of thinness, of non-sexuality, of 'good' feminism versus 'bad' feminism, are proofs of our being at the beginning, not the end of a process. That younger feminists are embracing their sexuality is a sign of hope
a sign that women's lives will some day be less constricted, less fearful of the dark side of creativity (to which Eros provides the key). If that happens, we will at least have the full gamut of inspiration so long denied us. We will have access to all parts of ourselves
all the animals within us, from wolf to lamb. When we learn to love all the animals within us, we will know how to make men love them too. ~ Erica Jong

The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did. ~ Erica Jong

Few women see power as an end in itself. The point of power is the freedom to cultivate roses. ~ Erica Jong

Perhaps it is because Venice is both liquid and solid, both air and stone, that it somehow combines all the elements crucial to make our imaginations ignite and turn fantasies into realities. ~ Erica Jong

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

Feminism is really the right of women to be full human beings and to not be defined only by their childbearing function. Feminism is really the right of women to be human beings. That's it, yet that's so frightening to a lot of people. A full human being wants satisfying work and love. A full human being is entitled to both, and is not simply defined by only one aspect of her being. ~ Erica Jong

When one follows the path with heart, one often bleeds. (But what is the alternative - a cauterized core?) ~ Erica Jong

Women really must have equal pay for equal work, equality in work at home, and reproductive choices. Men must press for these things also. They must cease to see them as "women's issues" and learn that they are everyone's issues - essential to survival on planet Earth. ~ Erica Jong

Do you ever leave your arrogance at home or does it follow you wherever you go? - Alex

This isn't arrogance, I'm just honest and soon enough you'll be honest with yourself and admit that you want me as much as I want you. - Dane ~ Lisa De Jong

You're not too fat; you're just in the wrong country. ~ Erica Jong

Kim Jong Un shaved his eyebrows and got his hair sticking right up. How would you like the leader of your country looking like Lady Gaga? Even Dennis Rodman told him he looks weird. ~ David Letterman

Here is the difference between Oscar Wilde and me. For all the tortures he suffered, for all the ugliness of being punished for loving men, nobody read his lines and asked him: What does your husband think of that? Jail, exile
these were his lot. But never, What does your husband think?
Women may have the vote, but they are not free as long as that reaction erupts. Even those without husbands are judged as if they had offended them merely by writing the truth.
So immovable is the wall around a woman's freedom that she can't do a things without being asked to think of its effect upon some man who is presumed to be more important than she. ~ Erica Jong

Kim Jong-Un is a dangerous leader, without a doubt. And both Republican and Democrat administrations have been completely ineffective in dealing with him. So we must continue to isolate him. We will need China as part of that strategy. ~ Carly Fiorina

[Henry Miller] was such a scribomaniac that even when he lived in the same house as Lawrence Durrell they often exchanged letters. For most of his life, Henry wrote literally dozens of letters a day to people he could have easily engaged in conversation - and did. The writing process, in short, was essential. As it is to all real writers, writing was life and breath to him. He put out words as a tree puts out leaves. ~ Erica Jong

Any one of my many shrinks could tell you that I was looking for my father. Wasn't everyone? The explanation didn't quite content me. Not that it seemed wrong: it just seemed too simple. Perhaps the search was really a kind of ritual in which the process was more important than the end. Perhaps it was a kind of quest. Perhaps there was no man at all, but just a mirage conjured by our longing and emptiness. When you go to sleep hungry you dream of eating. When you go to sleep with a full bladder you dream of getting up to pee. When you go to sleep horny you dream of getting laid. Maybe the impossible man was nothing more than a specter made of our own yearning. Maybe he was like the fearless intruder, the phantom rapist women expect to find under their bed or in their closets. Or maybe he was really death, the last lover. ~ Erica Jong

A man who dreads trials and difficulties cannot become a revolutionary. If he is to become a revolutionary with an indomitable fighting spirit, he must be tempered in the arduous struggle from his youth. As the saying goes, early training means more than late earning. ~ Kim Jong Il