Erica Jong Quotes

Literature is for the sake of humanity.

When the written and spoken word is censored, the urban landscape becomes a nation's only physical link to the past.

It's a really important thing for Aboriginal people to remember how stories are told and the power of stories, and make it an important feature in our world again.

Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches — nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.

People are always saying it's the end of the Gutenberg era. More to the point, it's a return to an oral era. The Gutenberg galaxy was about the written word. At its best, the digital era is part of the rediscovery of the oral. At its worst, it's a Kafkaesque victory of the bureaucratic over the imagination.

I think the written word is probably the best medium of communication because you have time to reflect, you have time to choose your words, to get your sentences exactly right. Whereas when you're being interviewed, say, you have to talk on the fly, you have to improvise, you can change sentences around, and they're not exactly right.

When I start running my mouth, I start running facts. I start giving guys numbers. I start giving guys ideas of where I come from and where I work.

My writing just kind of exists out there in the air-it's all sort of intended as spoken, or sung, word. So, to commit them to the page...that way was kind of intimidating to me, yet intriguing, to try to reflect the rhythms and connotations and emotions that you can deliver, speaking-wise, on a page.

Blogging is a great way to provide tips and advice to each other.

Books are the building blocks of civilization, for without the written word, a man knows nothing beyond what occurs during his own brief years and, perhaps, in a few tales his parents tell him.

The tremendous efficiency and economy of the book has once again demonstrated itself. It's the world's most patient medium.

Knowledge is promiscuous. It mates and gives birth to more knowledge.

It's not what you know, and it's not even who you know. It's how much knowledge you give away. Hoarding knowledge diminishes your power because it diminishes your presence.

Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts?

I am anxious to give away information, for it is only by giving it away that you can keep it. When you have told it, you remember it. It is with information as it is with liberty, the only way to be dead sure of it is to give it to other people.

In America, we know to ignore artists if they're serious in any way.

Understand that the only way to get happiness is by giving it away to others.

Playwriting is an oral art; it's not an art of a writer expecting to be read but a writer expecting to be heard.

I think there's a lot to be learned from pop culture. But at the same time I see the dangers of using it in an exclusive way to construct meaning in your life.

When something is iconic, if you're very careful and delicate, you can add onto that iconography. It can expand. People have attached so much to it themselves, and connected to it, so the risks are big, but the potential is enormous, at the same time.

I think there is something about a story that is enduring. Stories take on a life of their own.

A film like Hoop Dreams is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and makes us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself.

The best way to come to terms with anything that is out of harmony is never to fear it - that gives it power. Bring good influences to bear upon it; make yourself a good example.

The importance of language in gaining knowledge is doubtless the chief cause of the common notion that knowledge may be passed directly from one to another. It almost seems as if all we have to do to convey an idea into the mind of another is to convey a sound into his ear. Thus imparting knowledge gets assimilated to a purely physical process.

Giving orders you know won't be obeyed is one of the best ways I know to destroy your own authority.