Quote

Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do. It's really dangerous and ultimately destroys you as a writer if you start thinking about responses to your work or what your audience needs.

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
Writing
Writer
Work
Dangerous
Really
Responsibility
Professions
Thinking
Audience
Responses
Start
Destroys
Left
Ultimately
Take
Profession
Needs
Response

More quotes by Erica Jong

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Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?
Erica Jong
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There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.
Erica Jong
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I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world.
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 am never so calm as after I have written. And the next morning I will feel the familiar anxiety and I will have to begin the process all over again.
Erica Jong
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Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.
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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Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I'm doing something right.
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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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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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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We've shown again and again, in every UN report on the status of women, that wherever women control their own bodies and have access to education, societies prosper. Men's fortunes go up, children's fortunes go up. This is not news - it's been proven repeatedly. Anywhere those things are threatened, we have to defend them.
Erica Jong
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What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to decieve?
Erica Jong
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If we don't risk anything, we risk even more.
Erica Jong
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Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry.
Erica Jong
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Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.
Erica Jong
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Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.
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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A Soul is partly given, partly wrought remember always that you are the Maker of your own Soul.
Erica Jong
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Ken, my husband, just smelled like he belonged to me. I'm not talking about hygiene. I'm talking about when you hug him, he either feels like a member of your tribe or not. It's their scent.
Erica Jong