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It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.

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
Males
Impersonate
Majors
Authors
Major
Concerns
Concern
Paradox
Poetry
Cosmic
Fiction
Dealing
Women
Writing
Male

More quotes by Erica Jong

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When I'm sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it's silence and despair! It's not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.
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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Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.
Erica Jong
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What a damnably lonely profession writing is! In order to do it, one must banish the world, and having banished it, one feels cosmically alone.
Erica Jong
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I see that the greatest thing about getting older is how your judgment changes and how you come to understand the cycles of life. And you keep having these amazing flashes of understanding.
Erica Jong
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Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
Erica Jong
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I am against censorship. I prefer the chaos of uncontrollable communication of all sorts to selective banning of certain materials. I do not think human beings can be trusted to be above politics and to promote the common good. One group's common good is another group's evil.
Erica Jong
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Women who bear children before they establish serious habits of work, may never establish them at all.
Erica Jong
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Genius is a strong aphrodisiac.
Erica Jong
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biography is essentially a collaborative art, the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.
Erica Jong
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Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.
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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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 actually think leaving your children alone to fantasize, to write, to make projects on their own is good for them. Breathing down their necks is a form of control. Children should have their own space.
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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Plot is just a fancy way of saying 'and then.
Erica Jong
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They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck.
Erica Jong
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Love is love, but marriage is an investment.
Erica Jong
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Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
Erica Jong
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Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
Erica Jong