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Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.

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
Stops
Torture
Writers
Moments
Self
Doubters
Brief

More quotes by 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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Denounce useless guilt. Don’t make a cult of suffering. Live in the now(or at least the soon). Always do the things you fear most. Courage is an acquired taste like caviar. Trust all joy. If the evil eye fixes you in its gaze, look elsewhere. Get ready to be 87.
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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Perhaps it is because Venice is both liquid and solid, both air and stone, that it somehow combines all the elements crucial to make our imaginations ignite and turn fantasies into realities.
Erica Jong
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I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.
Erica Jong
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Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
Erica Jong
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If we are all made of God, it is our friends who remind us. We pass the gift of God to them. They pass it back to us when we need it most.
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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Few women see power as an end in itself. The point of power is the freedom to cultivate roses.
Erica Jong
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We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.
Erica Jong
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As long as I'm facing the right direction, it doesn't matter the size of my steps.
Erica Jong
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Motherhood cannot finally be delegated. Breast-feeding may succumb to the bottle cuddling, fondling, and paediatric visits may also be done by fathers...but when a child needs a mother to talk to, nobody else but a mother will do.
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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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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Allow me to put the record straight. I am forty-six and have been for some years past.
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 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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Why do analysts always answer a question with a question?
Erica Jong
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You can't be creative and still be a good girl.
Erica Jong
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Genius is a strong aphrodisiac.
Erica Jong