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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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Erica Jong
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 26
Author
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
New York City
New York
Erica Mann Jong
Happens
Perfection
Also
Divine
Capriciously
Play
Becomes
Dogged
Work
Enemy
Playful
Since
Perfectionism
Less
Professionally
Often
Essentially
Art
Driven
More quotes by Erica Jong
... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?
Erica Jong
I think men have always been afraid of women's sexuality, and the restrictions they put on women testify to that.
Erica Jong
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
What a damnably lonely profession writing is! In order to do it, one must banish the world, and having banished it, one feels cosmically alone.
Erica Jong
I believe that women should live for love, for motherhood and for intellect, and I believe we shouldn't have to choose. And I believe that's always been difficult for women, to express themselves intellectually, maternally, and passionately.
Erica Jong
Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
Erica Jong
biography is essentially a collaborative art, the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.
Erica Jong
How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right.
Erica Jong
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
Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.
Erica Jong
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
Famous people complain about fame, but they never want to give it back, myself included.
Erica Jong
When I'm sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it's silence and despair! It's not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.
Erica Jong
You have to enjoy being a woman. Why should being a woman be such a negative thing where you always have to improve yourself? I have never in my entire life met a man who didn't want to go to bed with me because I was too fat.
Erica Jong
You are always naked when you start writing you are always as if you had never written anything before you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare
Erica Jong
Women who bear children before they establish serious habits of work, may never establish them at all.
Erica Jong
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
At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.
Erica Jong
I remember everything but forgive anyway.
Erica Jong
Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.
Erica Jong