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You must have a certain amount of maturity to be a poet. Seldom do sixteen-year-olds know themselves well enough.

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
Must
Seldom
Years
Poet
Amount
Year
Certain
Wells
Olds
Well
Sixteen
Enough
Maturity

More quotes by Erica Jong

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Isn't that the problem? That women have been swindled for centuries into substituting adornment for love, fashion (as it were) for passion?
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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Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.
Erica Jong
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It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.
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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Men and women, women and men. It will never work.
Erica Jong
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Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it.
Erica Jong
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Solitude is un-American.
Erica Jong
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In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving -instead of actually getting up and leaving.
Erica Jong
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Famous people complain about fame, but they never want to give it back, myself included.
Erica Jong
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Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry.
Erica Jong
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Plot is just a fancy way of saying 'and then.
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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Every time I catch myself saying, Oh no, you shouldn't try that, I think, Yes, I should.
Erica Jong
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I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.
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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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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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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You have to enjoy being a woman. Why should being a woman be such a negative thing where you always have to improve yourself? I have never in my entire life met a man who didn't want to go to bed with me because I was too fat.
Erica Jong
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When everyone thinks they know you, it's hard not to be guarded.
Erica Jong