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It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.

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
Writing
Wordless
Easier
Joy
Pain
Write

More quotes by 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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I see the whole episode in my memory as if it were a very crisply photographed black and white movie. Directed by Bergman perhaps.We are playing ourselves in the movie version. If only we could escape from always having to play ourselves !
Erica Jong
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This is the sad bed of chosen chastity because you are miles and mountains away.
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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The absolute bedrock of our independence is having control over our own bodies. You cannot be independent if the government or someone else says whether or not you can use birth control. Unless you're in charge of your body, you're not in charge of anything. I think that's really the bottom line of feminism.
Erica Jong
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I look forward and see myself look back.
Erica Jong
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Writers are always at the edge of the inferno, and the fire is licking at our toes. Luckily, this turns us on!
Erica Jong
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certain very old people reach an age where every funeral becomes some sort of insane confirmation of strength, rather than of vulnerability, as it is when we are in our thirties or forties and our friends die.
Erica Jong
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All people believe their suffering is greater than others.
Erica Jong
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I am not sure if love is a salve or just a deeper kind of wound.
Erica Jong
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I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of the bathtub plug a man?
Erica Jong
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We write poems / as leaves give oxygen - / so we can breathe.
Erica Jong
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Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
Erica Jong
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Few women see power as an end in itself. The point of power is the freedom to cultivate roses.
Erica Jong
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I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.
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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You're not too fat you're just in the wrong country.
Erica Jong
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One writes not by will but by surrender.
Erica Jong
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Good sex is a mystery. Perhaps humping and pumping is not a mystery, but good sex is a mystery, and how human beings become truly intimate remains a mystery.
Erica Jong
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Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could.
Erica Jong