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I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged...I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.

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
Many
Finish
Writing
Judged
Something
Went
Finishing
Years
Courses
Sending
Way
Course
Suspect
Written
Suspects
Times
Avoiding
Anything
Poems

More quotes by Erica Jong

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certain very old people reach an age where every funeral becomes some sort of insane confirmation of strength, rather than of vulnerability, as it is when we are in our thirties or forties and our friends die.
Erica Jong
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I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.
Erica Jong
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I am not sure if love is a salve or just a deeper kind of wound.
Erica Jong
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Great loves have legs and wings. They are substantial. They do not dissapate so easily... Great loves have staying power. Or so I told myself.
Erica Jong
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I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.
Erica Jong
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That was probably the mistake of my generation, that we thought that having sex with anyone would be intimate and it wasn't.
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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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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Is perception equivalent to existence?
Erica Jong
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Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry.
Erica Jong
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Memory is the most transient of all possessions. And when it goes, it leaves as few traces as stars that have disappeared.
Erica Jong
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The perfect man is the true partner. Not a bed partner nor a fun partner, but a man who will shoulder burdens equally with you and possess that quality of joy.
Erica Jong
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Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.
Erica Jong
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It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.
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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I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.
Erica Jong
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I am thinking of the onion again. . . . Not self-righteous like the proletarian potato, nor a siren like the apple. No show-off like the banana. But a modest, self-effacing vegetable, questioning, introspective, peeling itself away, or merely radiating halos like ripples.
Erica Jong
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Few women see power as an end in itself. The point of power is the freedom to cultivate roses.
Erica Jong
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I have enormous pride in the survival of the Jewish people, the cultural heritage of the Jewish people, but I'm not observant, and I don't belong to a synagogue. I don't go to temple on high holy days, but I'm proud to be Jewish.
Erica Jong
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Coupling doesn't always have to do with sex ... Two people holding each other up like flying buttresses. Two people depending on each other and babying each other and defending each other against the world outside. Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.
Erica Jong