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Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.

Erica Jong

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Erica Jong
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 26
Author
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
New York City
New York
Erica Mann Jong
Turn
Dies
Turns
Born
Beloved
Fall
Poetry
Moments
Baby
Love
Emotional
Life
Friend

More quotes by Erica Jong

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Conflict is the soul of literature.
Erica Jong
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The absolute bedrock of our independence is having control over our own bodies. You cannot be independent if the government or someone else says whether or not you can use birth control. Unless you're in charge of your body, you're not in charge of anything. I think that's really the bottom line of feminism.
Erica Jong
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I am against censorship. I prefer the chaos of uncontrollable communication of all sorts to selective banning of certain materials. I do not think human beings can be trusted to be above politics and to promote the common good. One group's common good is another group's evil.
Erica Jong
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You are always naked when you start writing you are always as if you had never written anything before you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare
Erica Jong
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Singularity shows something wrong in the mind.
Erica Jong
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Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
Erica Jong
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we need poetry most at those moments when life astounds us with losses, gains, or celebrations. We need it most when we are most hurt, most happy, most downcast, most jubilant. Poetry is the language we speak in times of greatest need. And the fact that it is an endangered species in our culture tells us that we are in deep trouble.
Erica Jong
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Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
Erica Jong
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Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
Erica Jong
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It is not surprising that Venice is known above all for mirrors and glass since Venice is the most narcissistic city in the world, the city that celebrates self-mirroring.
Erica Jong
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Venice, that capital city of dream and intrigue, that double city (one above and seemingly solid, one below, wavering and reflected in the waters), which never disappoints.
Erica Jong
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Each day that I don't write I get more fragmented.
Erica Jong
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We've shown again and again, in every UN report on the status of women, that wherever women control their own bodies and have access to education, societies prosper. Men's fortunes go up, children's fortunes go up. This is not news - it's been proven repeatedly. Anywhere those things are threatened, we have to defend them.
Erica Jong
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Because I loved myself, I was loved.
Erica Jong
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Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.
Erica Jong
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perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.
Erica Jong
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Being a daughter is only half the equation bearing one is the other.
Erica Jong
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You must have a certain amount of maturity to be a poet. Seldom do sixteen-year-olds know themselves well enough.
Erica Jong
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Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.
Erica Jong
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Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms!
Erica Jong