And what if I don’t want forgiveness?
ERICA JONGMy 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.
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.
ERICA JONG -
A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.
ERICA JONG -
There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.
ERICA JONG -
The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.
ERICA JONG -
We were not human beings going through spiritual experiences; we were spiritual beings going through human experiences, in order to grow.
ERICA JONG -
Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.
ERICA JONG -
I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.
ERICA JONG -
Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don’t feel any experience is complete unless it’s recorded.
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If you don’t have time to do it right you must have time to do it right you must have time to do it over. If you don’t know where you are going, how do you know when you get there? If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
ERICA JONG -
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
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The parity of women’s health. It’s very depressing to think that you win these rights, but then you have to win them again, and again, and again, and fight the same battles over and over.
ERICA JONG -
The trick is not how much pain you feel–but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain.
ERICA JONG -
Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.
ERICA JONG -
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
ERICA JONG -
It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.
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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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There’s always a backlash against progressive ideas.
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Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.
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It’s easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
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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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Divorce is my generation’s coming of age ceremony – a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
ERICA JONG -
Friends love misery… our misery is what endears us to our friends.
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I look forward and see myself look back.
ERICA JONG -
Every time I catch myself saying, “Oh no, you shouldn’t try that,” I think, “Yes, I should.”
ERICA JONG -
As long as I’m facing the right direction, it doesn’t matter the size of my steps.
ERICA JONG -
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