Quote

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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Erica Jong
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 26
Author
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
New York City
New York
Erica Mann Jong
Movies
Wasn
Mouthed
Television
Mediocre
Simple
Spoken
Actors
Prose
Read
Escape
Might
Exist
Good
Poetry

More quotes by 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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People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas.
Erica Jong
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At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.
Erica Jong
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If we don't risk anything, we risk even more.
Erica Jong
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A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.
Erica Jong
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When I was a ten-year old bookworm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons, it used to amaze me that these remote people could provoke me to love.
Erica Jong
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A Soul is partly given, partly wrought remember always that you are the Maker of your own Soul.
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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Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry.
Erica Jong
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You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
Erica Jong
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Famous people complain about fame, but they never want to give it back, myself included.
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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Faith is the Knowledge of the Heart, Logick the Knowledge of the Mind.
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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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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I think I've become more cynical about sex. Meaning, I don't think sex in and of itself leads to an epiphany.
Erica Jong
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The most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.
Erica Jong
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It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present.
Erica Jong
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A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart.
Erica Jong
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What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave.
Erica Jong