Quote

The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.

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
Feels
Motivation
Much
Joy
Life
Full
Excuses
Hurt
Trick
Pain
Optimism
Inspirational
Tricks
Live
Idiot
Feel
Excuse

More quotes by Erica Jong

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I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.
Erica Jong
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Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.
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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As yet we use our media only for selling things - including, of course, political candidates. What will happen when someone masters the art of selling souls?
Erica Jong
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What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.
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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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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Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.
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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Each day that I don't write I get more fragmented.
Erica Jong
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Writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.
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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Not everybody has to be a parent. In fact, in an overpopulated world where our resources are shrinking, it would be wonderful if people who didn't want children felt free to say so. In the 1970s, there was more tolerance for the idea that not everybody needs to be a biological parent.
Erica Jong
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A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart.
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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In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap, our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us.
Erica Jong
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I had been a feminist all my life, but the big problem was how to make your feminism jibe with you unappeasable hunger for male bodies.
Erica Jong
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The most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.
Erica Jong
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At certain historic moments, grandparents took on childrearing responsibilities. In many cultures, they still do. Chinese grandparents who are able to retire at 55 are seen all over Beijing bouncing grandbabies. In the United States, we can't afford to retire at 55.
Erica Jong
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How could one create life with someone who represented death?
Erica Jong