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The trick is not how much pain you feel - but how much joy you feel

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
Much
Love
Trick
Tricks
Excuse
Joy
Pain
Feel
Feels

More quotes by Erica Jong

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perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.
Erica Jong
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Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.
Erica Jong
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Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.
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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I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.
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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We all have fantasies about sex that are more perfect than anything in reality.
Erica Jong
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Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
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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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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It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present.
Erica Jong
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I don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish.
Erica Jong
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Writers tend to be addicted to houses ... We work at home, indulging the agoraphobia endemic to our kind. We are immersed in our surroundings to an almost morbid degree.
Erica Jong
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There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.
Erica Jong
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A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.
Erica Jong
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Sex doesn't disappear, it just changes forms.
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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It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write.
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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I don't believe in organized religion. I believe that people should try to connect with their own life force and let it lead them to do with their lives what they will find satisfying.
Erica Jong