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We write poems / as leaves give oxygen - / so we can breathe.

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
Breathe
Poet
Write
Give
Giving
Writing
Oxygen
Poems
Leaves

More quotes by 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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We all have fantasies about sex that are more perfect than anything in reality.
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 have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it.
Erica Jong
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Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it.
Erica Jong
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That was probably the mistake of my generation, that we thought that having sex with anyone would be intimate and it wasn't.
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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Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.
Erica Jong
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Language matters because whoever controls the words controls the conversation, because whoever controls the conversation controls its outcome, because whoever frames the debate has already won it, because telling the truth has become harder and harder to achieve in an America drowning in Orwellian Newspeak.
Erica Jong
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Is perception equivalent to existence?
Erica Jong
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Genius is a strong aphrodisiac.
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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The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.
Erica Jong
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A wet dream in the mind of New York.
Erica Jong
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All authors know that any book is a casting of runes, a reading of cards, a map of the palm and heart. We make up the ocean - then fall in. But we also write the life raft.
Erica Jong
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Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.
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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The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
Erica Jong
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Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.
Erica Jong
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Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
Erica Jong