No one to blame!... That was why most people led lives they hated, with people they hated.... How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right. You may be fragmented, but you feel absolved of all the blame for it. Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

(Erica Jong (b. 1942), U.S. author. "Intuition, extuition ... ," How To Save Your Own Life (1977).)

There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.

(Erica Jong (b. 1942), U.S. author. Narrator (Isadora Wing), in Fear of Flying, ch. 9 (1973).)

There is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh, she can get along financially perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that her husbandlessness, her childlessness?her selfishness, in short?is a reproach to the American way of life.

(Erica Jong (b. 1942), U.S. author. Isadora Wing, the narrator, in Fear of Flying, ch. 1 (1973).)

I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me. I have accepted fear as a part of life, specifically the fear of change, the fear of the unknown, and I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back, turn back, you'll die if you venture too far.

(Erica Jong, U.S. author. In an essay in The Writer on Her Work, ch. 13 (1980).)

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.

(Erica Jong (b. 1942), U.S. author. How To Save Your Own Life, epigraph to "My posthumous life ...," (1977).)

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

(Erica Jong (b. 1942), U.S. author. "The Artist as Housewife," The First Ms. Reader, ed. Francine Kragbrun (1972).)

Solitude is un-American.

(Erica Jong (b. 1942), U.S. author. Fear of Flying, ch. 1 (1973).)

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it.... It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

(Erica Jong (b. 1942), U.S. author. Hans, in "Intuition, extuition ...," How to Save Your Own Life (1977).)

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 (b. 1942), U.S. author. Fear of Flying, ch. 1 (1973). Jong explained, "Zipless ... because the incident has all the swift compression of a dream and is seemingly free of all remorse and guilt.")

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 (20th century), U.S. author. Fear of Fifty: A Middle Life Memoir, reprinted in Barnard Magazine (summer 1994).)