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The most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.

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
Thing
Locked
Writer
Study
Important

More quotes by 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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... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?
Erica Jong
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Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.
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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I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world.
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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Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do. It's really dangerous and ultimately destroys you as a writer if you start thinking about responses to your work or what your audience needs.
Erica Jong
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The most important education you get is your own - the one you learn in solitude.
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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There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.
Erica Jong
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If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.
Erica Jong
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It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.
Erica Jong
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Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.
Erica Jong
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The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.
Erica Jong
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Conflict is the soul of literature.
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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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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the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.
Erica Jong
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Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.
Erica Jong
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If we are all made of God, it is our friends who remind us. We pass the gift of God to them. They pass it back to us when we need it most.
Erica Jong