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A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.

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
Reading
Incendiary
Book
Brimming
Match
Boxes
Strikes
Material
Materials
Reader

More quotes by Erica Jong

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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
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I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.
Erica Jong
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We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion.
Erica Jong
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Is perception equivalent to existence?
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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Because I loved myself, I was loved.
Erica Jong
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We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.
Erica Jong
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I am never so calm as after I have written. And the next morning I will feel the familiar anxiety and I will have to begin the process all over again.
Erica Jong
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I remember everything but forgive anyway.
Erica Jong
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Conflict is the soul of literature.
Erica Jong
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Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
Erica Jong
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Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.
Erica Jong
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When everyone thinks they know you, it's hard not to be guarded.
Erica Jong
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Most sex doesn't really bring people together. You have to reach a certain level of connection, I think, and that's pretty rare.
Erica Jong
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Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.
Erica Jong
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There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.
Erica Jong
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I think feminism means what it has always meant - women want to use all their gifts, all their talents and be judged impartially for them. I don't think feminism has ever meant anything else.
Erica Jong
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We write poems / as leaves give oxygen - / so we can breathe.
Erica Jong
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You're not too fat you're just in the wrong country.
Erica Jong
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I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.
Erica Jong