If you imagine the world listening, you’ll never write a line. That’s why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.
ERICA JONGNo 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.
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 -
Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.
ERICA JONG -
The trick is not how much pain you feel – but how much joy you feel
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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.
ERICA JONG -
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 -
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.
ERICA JONG -
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.
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Our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us.
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How could one create life with someone who represented death?
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I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.
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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 -
Women 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.
ERICA JONG -
Do all women have to keep silent for men to speak? Do all women have to be legless for men to walk?
ERICA JONG -
There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.
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The camera creates a magical transformation. It’s not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. …
ERICA JONG