Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don’t feel any experience is complete unless it’s recorded.
ERICA JONGEvery time I catch myself saying, “Oh no, you shouldn’t try that,” I think, “Yes, I should.”
More Erica Jong Quotes
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Anger is really disappointed hope.
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I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.
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I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.
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Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.
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Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.
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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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Conflict is the soul of literature.
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Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can’t function without it.
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There’s always a backlash against progressive ideas.
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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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Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
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I am old enough to know that laughter, not anger, is the true revelation.
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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.
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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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Friends love misery… our misery is what endears us to our friends.
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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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Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
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If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.
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A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.
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Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.
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I vowed to give up sex, bacon, and air travel if I ever made it back to terra firma in one piece.
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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.
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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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As long as I’m facing the right direction, it doesn’t matter the size of my steps.
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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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How could one create life with someone who represented death?
ERICA JONG