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Murky language means someone wants to pick your pocket.

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
Clarity
Pick
Picks
Wants
Language
Means
Murky
Someone
Pocket
Mean
Pockets

More quotes by Erica Jong

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I am not quite sure how writing changes things, but I know that it does. It is indirect-like the trails of earthworms aerating the earth. It is not always deliberate-like the tails of glowing dust dragged by comets.
Erica Jong
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Mediocre prose might be read as an escape, might be spoken on television by actors, or mouthed in movies. But mediocre poetry did not exist at all. If poetry wasn't good, it wasn't poetry. It was that simple.
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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... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?
Erica Jong
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My generation had Doris Day as a role model, then Gloria Steinem--then Princess Diana. We are the most confused generation.
Erica Jong
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I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.
Erica Jong
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Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.
Erica Jong
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Solitude is un-American.
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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If we ban whatever offends any group in our diverse society, we will soon have no art, no culture, no humor, no satire. Satire is by its nature offensive. So is much art and political discourse. The value of these expressions far outweighs their risk.
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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One writes not by will but by surrender.
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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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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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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Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.
Erica Jong
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No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Erica Jong
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It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
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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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