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

More quotes by Erica Jong

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There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.
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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Is perception equivalent to existence?
Erica Jong
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The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
Erica Jong
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Sex doesn't disappear, it just changes forms.
Erica Jong
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I think feminism means what it has always meant - women want to use all their gifts, all their talents and be judged impartially for them. I don't think feminism has ever meant anything else.
Erica Jong
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A concern with 'public morality' is - if not the last refuge of a scoundrel - the first foray of the fascist.
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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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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The Passion that one Soul hath for God cannot be judged by another.
Erica Jong
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Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.
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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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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Loving someone is a loss of freedom - but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.
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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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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Eating is never so simple as hunger.
Erica Jong
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Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could.
Erica Jong
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My generation had Doris Day as a role model, then Gloria Steinem--then Princess Diana. We are the most confused generation.
Erica Jong
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You're not too fat you're just in the wrong country.
Erica Jong