My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings.
ERICA JONGLife is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
More Erica Jong Quotes
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Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
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I hope we don’t have to keep going back over the same territory and winning the same rights over and over again. The battle for birth control. The battle for abortion.
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Because I loved myself, I was loved.
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The camera creates a magical transformation. It’s not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. …
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What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation.
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Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can’t function without it.
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If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs.
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No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
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I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself.
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Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
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Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.
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Of all the foolish Fears of Humankind, Fear of the Future is by far the most foolish.
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I have accepted fear as a part of life – specifically the fear of change… I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.
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Often I find that poems predict what I’m going to do later in my own writing, and often I find that poems predict my life. So I think poetry is the most intense expression of feeling that we have.
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Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don’t feel any experience is complete unless it’s recorded.
ERICA JONG