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Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.

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
Dying
Dies
Young
Think
Thinking
Keats
Braver
Worshipped

More quotes by Erica Jong

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I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged...I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.
Erica Jong
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We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion.
Erica Jong
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The most important education you get is your own - the one you learn in solitude.
Erica Jong
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Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.
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
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Is there a phrase in the English language more fraught with menace than a tax audit?
Erica Jong
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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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we write as if our lives depended upon it. They do.
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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To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.
Erica Jong
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Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.
Erica Jong
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If you've been a pretty woman and always pursued by lovers, losing that and not having that - it feels like a great loss.
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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The camera creates a magical transformation. It's not enough to exist we must chronicle that existence. ... Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don't feel any experience is complete unless it's recorded.
Erica Jong
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Anger is really disappointed hope.
Erica Jong
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Good sex is a mystery. Perhaps humping and pumping is not a mystery, but good sex is a mystery, and how human beings become truly intimate remains a mystery.
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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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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We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.
Erica Jong
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I have a very sensitive nose. I identify with dogs. I understand the world through my nose.
Erica Jong