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I don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish.

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
Read
Everything
Book
Need
Needs
Trying
Finish
Necessarily
Inspire

More quotes by Erica Jong

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The only rule I have when writing is to try to tell the truth. That doesn't mean you can't exaggerate, edit, rewrite things to make them more dramatic. But emotional truth is what I look for in writing.
Erica Jong
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Souls have neither Sex nor Colour.
Erica Jong
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I look forward and see myself look back.
Erica Jong
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Writers tend to be addicted to houses ... We work at home, indulging the agoraphobia endemic to our kind. We are immersed in our surroundings to an almost morbid degree.
Erica Jong
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Coupling doesn't always have to do with sex ... Two people holding each other up like flying buttresses. Two people depending on each other and babying each other and defending each other against the world outside. Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.
Erica Jong
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Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.
Erica Jong
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If we ban whatever offends any group in our diverse society, we will soon have no art, no culture, no humor, no satire. Satire is by its nature offensive. So is much art and political discourse. The value of these expressions far outweighs their risk.
Erica Jong
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Every time I catch myself saying, Oh no, you shouldn't try that, I think, Yes, I should.
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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I think poetry is the best thing I do. It's certainly the purest. I seem to switch gears without too much trouble. Non-fiction is in many ways the easiest to write.
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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Memory is the most transient of all possessions. And when it goes, it leaves as few traces as stars that have disappeared.
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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Is there a phrase in the English language more fraught with menace than a tax audit?
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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Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.
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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Love is love, but marriage is an investment.
Erica Jong
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The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.
Erica Jong
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You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
Erica Jong