Erica Jong Quotes

My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.

To call someone like me a writer-activist suggests that it's not the job of a writer to write about the society in which they live. But it used to be our job.

I do not believe that it is necessarily the duty of the writer to give a voice to his community. If a writer is true to his vocation, to his or her vocation, the very process of creativity enlarges these human horizons. It provides insights, even when you're not writing, when your writing's not dealing with a concrete political situation.

Writers cannot let themselves be servants of the official mythology. They have to, whatever the cost, say what truth they have to say.

All writers who can claim to be called 'living' must be political in a sense. They must have what the Quakers call a concern to understand what is happening in the world, and must engage themselves, in their writing, to promote no comfortable lies, of the sort which people will pay well to be told rather than the truth.

It's OK just to be a writer, who writes about the society in which he lives and the issues that most important. Now how can that not be a writer, it always was. It's just recently that writers have been reduced to these playthings of the market.

The challenge of writing books for teenagers is walking the fine line between truth and what the publishers, parents, and the more conservative librarians want to hear.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

Art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

The best theater is trying to tell the truth, and the best politics is trying to tell the truth.

I'm a writer. My job is to speak what - that which I think is true. If that bridges the gap, that's good. If it doesn't, that's too bad.

If you are a writer from Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, you don't have the luxury of being apolitical. You can't say, 'That's politics. I'm just doing my work.'

People like Dick Gregory, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte and Nina Simone show me what the definition of an artist is - it isn't just to make art but to speak truth to what's happening, speak beauty into the world, speak love into the world and also... get involved.

I always want to tell the truth. It doesn't have to be a pretty truth, and it doesn't have to be a life-changing and life-threatening truth like 'Chi-Raq.' But I want to tell someone's truth in an effort to inspire people to see themselves reflected on the screen.

It is hard to speak the truth about valued national institutions. But when they are not fit for purpose, we must speak out.

I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth, so help me God. And I thought I was. I found I couldn't. Nobody can write the absolute truth.

If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children.

There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar.

The existence of the writer is to write, and to write is to tell the truth.

As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.

I can handle a bad story better than anybody as long as it's true and, you know, over a course of time, I'll make mistakes and you'll write badly and I'm OK with that. But I'm not OK when it is fake.

You're going to write straight and simple and good now. That's the start.''What if I'm not straight and simple and good? Do you think I can write that way?''Write how you are but make it straight.

If you're gonna write, for God in heaven's sake, try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you've been told.

My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain.

A lot of comics just joke around, but it's just as important to get the truth out there.