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
Read
Escape
Might
Exist
Good
Poetry
Movies
Wasn
Mouthed
Television
Mediocre
Simple
Spoken
Actors
Prose

More quotes by 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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In a way women are fleshier because of estrogen. It's hard for us to lose weight because when we get super skinny we don't ovulate. Women in camps during the Holocaust didn't menstruate and didn't ovulate. They were starving they were terrified. Why emulate that condition? It's nonsensical to me.
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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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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All people believe their suffering is greater than others.
Erica Jong
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what was time but a convention, a habit of mind, a custom of dress?
Erica Jong
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How could one create life with someone who represented death?
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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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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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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It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.
Erica Jong
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The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.
Erica Jong
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Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need them at the times when they need them ... Cosmic forces guide such passings-along.
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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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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I have enormous pride in the survival of the Jewish people, the cultural heritage of the Jewish people, but I'm not observant, and I don't belong to a synagogue. I don't go to temple on high holy days, but I'm proud to be Jewish.
Erica Jong
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If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.
Erica Jong
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The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.
Erica Jong
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The perfect man is the true partner. Not a bed partner nor a fun partner, but a man who will shoulder burdens equally with you and possess that quality of joy.
Erica Jong
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Is perception equivalent to existence?
Erica Jong