Erica Jong Quotes

In Europe art has to a large degree taken the place of religion. In America it seems rather to be science.

Hollywood... was the place where the United States perpetrated itself as a universal dream and put the dream into mass production.

I live in Italy part time, and they're obsessed with what's happening in LA too. They make fun of Americans, but the world wants to know what's going on in Hollywood.

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.

I'm not particularly into the formal, political side of faith, although I am spiritual and I do have a faith. But 'Strictly Come Dancing' is my religion.

I have long believed that celebrity, the way we worship and package and sell our pop stars, is what filled the need for gods that was once filled by the pictures in stained glass. Hollywood is post-Christian Venice - in other words, a pantheon of saints without the hassle and heartache of religion.

Hollywood, America's greatest modern contribution to world culture, is a business, a religion, an art form, and a state of mind.

The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas.

Vamps no longer exist. Stars have taken their roles.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

No matter the nationality, no matter the religion, no matter the ethnic background, America brings out the best in people.

I think we have to believe in things we don't see. That's really important for all of us, whether it's your religion or Santa Claus, or whatever. That's pretty much what it's about.

I was on some TV shows with Lady Gaga the other week, and you could see the difference in reaction between her fans and my fans outside. She comes out, and she looks like a star, and the reaction is just tears, crying, people going, 'Oh my God, Oh my God.' My fans are like: 'Alright, Ed.'

It should be no surprise that religion in the non-western world has failed to disappear under the juggernaut of industrial capitalism, or that liberal democracy finds its most dedicated saboteurs among the new middle classes.

The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.

There's nothing more American than movies.

Superstitions and belief in magic are perennial in just the same way as religion, and something near to being universal among mankind; and why this is so may be interesting, but in most cases the beliefs themselves are devoid of interesting content, at least to me.

The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.

I am fascinated with religion or things that people believe in and question that. I think it's interesting.

I love Westerns. They're a unique creation of American mythology.

Reality is a form of idolatry. It allows what is to define and limit what might be.

The religion of one seems madness unto another.

Christian attitudes are still important in a society even if they are no longer connected with belief.

the greatest American superstition was belief in facts.

America's two great specialties are demagogues and rock and roll, and we've all heard plenty of both in our time.