Erica Jong Quotes

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

You don't become a poet if you want to make any money.

I had a million jobs before I managed to make a living out of poetry.

Poetry was the first step, and from the age of 18, there was nothing else I wanted to do.

Somebody said us artists have trouble with success because art is derived from struggle. I disagree with that, because truely doing your art is success, whether you make money from it or not.

Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.

I've written poetry since I was a kid. As the years went on, I got into writing stories and screenplays, but I always, always kept up with poetry as well.

Careers don't interest me. The only thing that interests me is continuing to be a poet on one level or another, whether acting or writing or directing.

I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry.

I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.

I wanted to be a poet. I wrote from ages 15 to 22, but I left it because I discovered, and fell in love with, cinema.

You get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been.

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

If you become a creative writer with the idea that you are going to make a whole lot of money, then maybe this isn't the best choice for you.

I write all the time - I write poetry, I love to write.

Romantic poetry had its heyday when people like Lord Byron were kicking it large. But you try and make a living as a poet today, and you'll find it's very different!

I'd been writing poems for many years, but most of them I didn't like. Then, when I was 23, I wrote one I did like, sent it to 'The Paris Review' - the highest publication I could think of - and they accepted it. No other moment in my literary life has quite come close to that.

My editor, Robin Robertson, is one of this country's finest poets, so I listen to him when he offers advice.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

Of course, I have to consider that I've written a lot of prose, but I do in my heart think of myself as being originally, and still primarily, a poet.

Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.

By 17, I was submitting to publications and collecting my first rejection slips.

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.

Forget being 'discovered.' All you can do is write. If you write well enough, and are stubborn enough to embrace failure, and if you happen to fall into the narrow categories that the book market recognizes, then you might make a little money. Otherwise, it's a struggle. A gorgeous struggle.