Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.—Erica Jong

Erica Jong is the prolific, multi-genre, award-winning, bestselling, taboo-busting author (can you tell I’m a fan?) of more than twenty books—fiction, nonfiction, poetry—including her first novel Fear of Flying, her memoir Seducing the Demon: Writing about My Life, and her latest poetry collection Love Comes First. Smart, funny, and courageous, she has faced self-doubt, followed her talent, and created inspiring work.

• Find out what makes Erica Jong such a great role model for courageous women writers in this bio on her website.
• Read—and memorize—her twenty rules for writers, one of which is “be a beginner.”
• In this 5-minute video Erica Jong reads two poems from Love Comes First.


• See more Erica Jong videos.
• See Erica Jong in conversation with Shoma Chaudhury at Tehelka’s THiNK 2012 session on “Body Games for the Mind: Sex, Liberation and How She Freed a Generation.” In this 50-minute program Jong talks about her life, relationships, art, and influences.
• See all of Erica Jong’s books at Indiebound.
• I found the featured quote in this post in an early edition of The Quotable Woman by Elaine Bernstein Partnow, who cited Jong’s article, “The Artist as Housewife: The Housewife as Artist” in The First Ms. Reader (1972) as the source.
• Read more quotes by Erica Jong.

See more quotes about writing here.