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As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.

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
Ideas
Idea
Guilds
Giving
President
Authors
Writing
Living
Reputation
Work
Write
Shouldn
Make
Away
Writers
Time
Past
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Women
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Guild

More quotes by Erica Jong

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... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?
Erica Jong
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When I'm sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it's silence and despair! It's not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.
Erica Jong
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Harriet van Horne He makes love to me expertly, mechanically, coldly... He's pressing all my buttons, as if I were a pocket calculator.
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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I see the whole episode in my memory as if it were a very crisply photographed black and white movie. Directed by Bergman perhaps.We are playing ourselves in the movie version. If only we could escape from always having to play ourselves !
Erica Jong
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Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.
Erica Jong
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Don't ye know that ev'ry Soul on Earth feels itself to be an Orphan?
Erica Jong
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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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Allow me to put the record straight. I am forty-six and have been for some years past.
Erica Jong
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Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.
Erica Jong
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But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.
Erica Jong
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Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.
Erica Jong
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What a damnably lonely profession writing is! In order to do it, one must banish the world, and having banished it, one feels cosmically alone.
Erica Jong
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Motherhood cannot finally be delegated. Breast-feeding may succumb to the bottle cuddling, fondling, and paediatric visits may also be done by fathers...but when a child needs a mother to talk to, nobody else but a mother will do.
Erica Jong
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Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
Erica Jong
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I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it.
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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The only rule I have when writing is to try to tell the truth. That doesn't mean you can't exaggerate, edit, rewrite things to make them more dramatic. But emotional truth is what I look for in writing.
Erica Jong
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To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.
Erica Jong
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Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.
Erica Jong