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If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.

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
Anything
Career
Best
Dying
Always
Careers
World
Move
Woman
Moving
Uppity
Young
Disdains
Women
Disdain

More quotes by Erica Jong

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The dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.
Erica Jong
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Genius is a strong aphrodisiac.
Erica Jong
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Venice, that capital city of dream and intrigue, that double city (one above and seemingly solid, one below, wavering and reflected in the waters), which never disappoints.
Erica Jong
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As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.
Erica Jong
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Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.
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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The Lives of Great Men are more oft' at variance with their profess'd Phillosophies than consistent with 'em.
Erica Jong
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Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.
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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The most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.
Erica Jong
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Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.
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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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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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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It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
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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Not everybody has to be a parent. In fact, in an overpopulated world where our resources are shrinking, it would be wonderful if people who didn't want children felt free to say so. In the 1970s, there was more tolerance for the idea that not everybody needs to be a biological parent.
Erica Jong
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Because I loved myself, I was loved.
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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As yet we use our media only for selling things - including, of course, political candidates. What will happen when someone masters the art of selling souls?
Erica Jong