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.
ERICA JONGThe trick is not how much pain you feel–but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain.
More Erica Jong Quotes
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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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Solitude is un-American.
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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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Betrayal betrays the betrayer.
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Is perception equivalent to existence?
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Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
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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 is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.
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The camera creates a magical transformation. It’s not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. …
ERICA JONG -
There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.
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Art is always an energy exchange.
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Because I loved myself, I was loved.
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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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Divorce is my generation’s coming of age ceremony – a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
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Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
ERICA JONG -
The trick is not how much pain you feel–but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain.
ERICA JONG -
I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.
ERICA JONG -
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
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I don’t think you will ever fully understand how you’ve touched my life and made me who I am.
ERICA JONG -
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
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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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People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn’t. Social attitudes don’t change in a straight line.
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A new dog never replaces an old dog; it merely expands the heart. If you have loved many dogs, your heart is very big.
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Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
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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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There’s always a backlash against progressive ideas.
ERICA JONG