Erica Jong Quotes

There's more substance in my prose and my poetry than in all my films together. Writing is a more direct way of expressing yourself because, in cinema, you always have finances, organization, actors, technical apparatus and all that stuff coming in between.

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.

What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down.

There must of course be a relationship between translating and making poems of your own, but what it is I just don't know.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.

If you're a songwriter, you have to do homework. You can exist for a while on the inspiration, but at some point, you have to sit down and have the discipline to write - to finish the poem, as they say.

With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

I've written poetry since I was in the first grade, and it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I realized poetry could be put to music and become a song.

Poetry is a pure meritocracy. There's no room for ambiguity: either a poem moves you and opens up new vistas in life, or it doesn't. It's completely objective, and the best always rise to the top.

Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form.

At the end of the day, I want to be known for my ability to create life from words.

The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.

I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life. It isn't some set piece that then gets put up on the shelf, but that the impetus, the real instigation for poetry is everything that's happening around us.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.

The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it.

Poetry is almost like my foundation for everything. I almost feel I am a better actor and writer because of it.

Music is closer to poetry than anything.

I've never had to search for themes. My films just come naturally out of my interest.

You're alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch with to write poetry.

When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry.

Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it.