Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don’t feel any experience is complete unless it’s recorded.
ERICA JONGSilence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.
More Erica Jong Quotes
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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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I don’t know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else’s erotica that you don’t like.
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My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.
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In loving life you love what can’t survive.
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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.
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Home is where your books are.
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Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
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It’s easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
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If you imagine the world listening, you’ll never write a line. That’s why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.
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There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.
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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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Anger is really disappointed hope.
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How could one create life with someone who represented death?
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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.
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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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Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture . . . Show me a woman who doesn’t feel guilty and I’ll show you a man.
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If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it’s because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that’s the most revolutionary insight of all.
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Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.
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Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
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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.
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Because I loved myself, I was loved.
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Breast-feeding may succumb to the bottle; cuddling, fondling, and paediatric visits may also be done by fathers…but when a child needs a mother to talk to, nobody else but a mother will do.
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Betrayal betrays the betrayer.
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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.
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Do all women have to keep silent for men to speak? Do all women have to be legless for men to walk?
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The sexuality doesn’t end. It really doesn’t. You’re sexual your whole life, if you’re a sexual person.
ERICA JONG