Erica Jong - How to Save Your Own Life (1977)

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Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.

Erica Jong
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't...

Erica Jong
In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving – instead of actually getting up and leaving.

Erica Jong
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it... It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more

Erica Jong
Having a baby with him meant marrying that face forever.

Erica Jong
The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach.

Erica Jong
Without sex it would be so easy to choose appropriate people to live with. Sex was the joker in an otherwise rational deck.

Erica Jong
... jealousy makes the prick grow harder. And the cunt wetter.

Erica Jong
Someday every woman will have orgasms — like every family has color TV — and we can all get on with the business of life.

Erica Jong
You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses.

Erica Jong
My body was flesh, which was only one step removed from shit, from clay, from dust.

Erica Jong
Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.

Erica Jong
I only know that in our choice of friends and lovers and teachers who will change our lives, we are guided by forces which have nothing to do with the rationalizations we give.

Erica Jong
I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world...

Erica Jong
... the ocean kept falling into itself, gathering itself up, and falling into itself again.

Erica Jong
Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage — however often we are hurt as a result of it.

Erica Jong
All people believe their suffering is greater than others.

Erica Jong
The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

Erica Jong
Loving someone is a loss of freedom — but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.

Erica Jong
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had...

Erica Jong
If you apologize for something that isn't your fault in the first place, you, in effect, confirm their belief that it is your fault.

Erica Jong
Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.

Erica Jong
What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to decieve?

Erica Jong
Photographs... are the most curious indicators of reality.

Erica Jong
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

Erica Jong
Inevitably, I drank too much, talked too much, smiled too hard, swallowed back too much bile.

Erica Jong
They all cheat sooner or later. You might as well have one who isn't a bore the rest of the time.

Erica Jong
There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship—only backward.

Erica Jong
How could one create life with someone who represented death?

Erica Jong
Always do the things you fear the most; courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.

Erica Jong