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

More quotes by Erica Jong

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We all have fantasies about sex that are more perfect than anything in reality.
Erica Jong
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tis true that tho' People can transcend their Characters in Times of Tranquillity, they can ne'er do so in Times of Tumult.
Erica Jong
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You are always naked when you start writing you are always as if you had never written anything before you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare
Erica Jong
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Souls have neither Sex nor Colour.
Erica Jong
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Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.
Erica Jong
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Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?
Erica Jong
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Blocks usually stem from fear of being judged. If you imagine the world is listening, you'll never write a line.
Erica Jong
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As long as I'm facing the right direction, it doesn't matter the size of my steps.
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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I have a very sensitive nose. I identify with dogs. I understand the world through my nose.
Erica Jong
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I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.
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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No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Erica Jong
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... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?
Erica Jong
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Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.
Erica Jong
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Perhaps every generation thinks of itself as a lost generation and perhaps every generation is right.
Erica Jong
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I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.
Erica Jong
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The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.
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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I am not sure if love is a salve or just a deeper kind of wound.
Erica Jong