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Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I'm doing something right.

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
Usually
Fear
Right
Something
Sign

More quotes by Erica Jong

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Genius is a strong aphrodisiac.
Erica Jong
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I am not quite sure how writing changes things, but I know that it does. It is indirect-like the trails of earthworms aerating the earth. It is not always deliberate-like the tails of glowing dust dragged by comets.
Erica Jong
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What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave.
Erica Jong
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Mediocre prose might be read as an escape, might be spoken on television by actors, or mouthed in movies. But mediocre poetry did not exist at all. If poetry wasn't good, it wasn't poetry. It was that simple.
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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Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.
Erica Jong
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Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it.
Erica Jong
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My grandchildren are fabulous and funny.
Erica Jong
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Keeping a journal implies hope.
Erica Jong
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Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
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
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A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.
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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As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.
Erica Jong
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I think I've become more cynical about sex. Meaning, I don't think sex in and of itself leads to an epiphany.
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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A concern with 'public morality' is - if not the last refuge of a scoundrel - the first foray of the fascist.
Erica Jong
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If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.
Erica Jong
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Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.
Erica Jong
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I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.
Erica Jong