Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I’m doing something right.
ERICA JONGI don’t think that sex necessarily produces intimacy.
More Erica Jong Quotes
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Every time we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped about five hundred feet (leaving my stomach in my mouth)
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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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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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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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Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.
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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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What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not exhortation.
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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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There’s always a backlash against progressive ideas.
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Before things are written down they don’t exist in quite the same way. The act of fixing them in words gives them a kind of currency that can be traded.
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Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
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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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I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading.
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You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
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Freedom is a loose leash, license to be different from your mother and still be loved…Freedom is…not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.
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I am old enough to know that laughter, not anger, is the true revelation.
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I see that the greatest thing about getting older is how your judgment changes and how you come to understand the cycles of life. And you keep having these amazing flashes of understanding.
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The trick is not how much pain you feel–but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain.
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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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Photographs are the most curious indicators of reality.
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Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.
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Conflict is the soul of literature.
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The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton’s first law of jealousy.
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It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
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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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In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap.
ERICA JONG