Quote

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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Erica Jong
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 26
Author
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
New York City
New York
Erica Mann Jong
Country
Places
Long
Lost
Believe
Found
Italy
Else
Fatal
Certain
Permission
Find
Nowhere
Human
Charm
Humans
Countries

More quotes by Erica Jong

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The Lives of Great Men are more oft' at variance with their profess'd Phillosophies than consistent with 'em.
Erica Jong
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Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could.
Erica Jong
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They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck.
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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Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.
Erica Jong
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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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I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.
Erica Jong
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tis true that tho' People can transcend their Characters in Times of Tranquillity, they can ne'er do so in Times of Tumult.
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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No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Erica Jong
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If you've been a pretty woman and always pursued by lovers, losing that and not having that - it feels like a great loss.
Erica Jong
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There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.
Erica Jong
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If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.
Erica Jong
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I have a very sensitive nose. I identify with dogs. I understand the world through my nose.
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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I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.
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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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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Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.
Erica Jong
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Murky language means someone wants to pick your pocket.
Erica Jong