A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.
ERICA JONGWomen 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.
More Erica Jong Quotes
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Conflict is the soul of literature.
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What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to decieve?
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Solitude is un-American.
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The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.
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Art is always an energy exchange.
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Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
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Images are … a kind of emotional shorthand.
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Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it.
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Don’t ye know that ev’ry Soul on Earth feels itself to be an Orphan?
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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.
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Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.
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Anger is really disappointed hope.
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As women got little crumbs of power, men began to act paranoid – as if we’d disabled them utterly.
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Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
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Divorce is my generation’s coming of age ceremony – a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
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Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That’s one reason old men can send them to war.
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Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it.
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Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare
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A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.
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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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My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates (470-399 B.C.) “Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t
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It’s horrible getting older. I mean, it’s wonderful because you see the circles of life get completed. But it’s horrible losing your looks.
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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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Loving someone is a loss of freedom – but one doesn’t think of it as loss because one gains so much else.
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I believe that women should live for love, for motherhood and for intellect, and I believe we shouldn’t have to choose. And I believe that’s always been difficult for women, to express themselves intellectually, maternally, and passionately.
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How could one create life with someone who represented death?
ERICA JONG