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I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.
Erica Jong -
Is there not an Arabick Proverb which goes, 'No one throws Stones at a Barren Tree'?
Erica Jong
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From Roman times to the present, Italy has been a country to fall in love with - a tribute to all that is enduring, crazy, pagan, joyous, melancholy, at once banal and divine, in the human spirit.
Erica Jong -
There is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh, she can get along financially perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that her husbandlessness, her childlessness - her selfishness, in short - is a reproach to the American way of life.
Erica Jong -
I knew I was in England by the smell.
Erica Jong -
Singularity shows something wrong in the mind.
Erica Jong -
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.
Erica Jong -
Henry Miller was such a scribomaniac that even when he lived in the same house as Lawrence Durrell they often exchanged letters. For most of his life, Henry wrote literally dozens of letters a day to people he could have easily engaged in conversation - and did. The writing process, in short, was essential. As it is to all real writers, writing was life and breath to him. He put out words as a tree puts out leaves.
Erica Jong
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Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.
Erica Jong -
It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.
Erica Jong -
Images are ... a kind of emotional shorthand.
Erica Jong -
The most important education you get is your own - the one you learn in solitude.
Erica Jong -
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.
Erica Jong -
I was always a feminist. My mother was a feminist; my grandmother was a feminist. I always understood women had to fight very hard to do what they wanted to do in the world - that it wasn't an easy choice. But I think the most important part is that we all want the right to be taken seriously as human beings, and to use our talents without reservation, and that's still not possible for women.
Erica Jong
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Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.
Erica Jong -
Loving someone is a loss of freedom - but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.
Erica Jong -
Each day that I don't write I get more fragmented.
Erica Jong -
Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.
Erica Jong -
Creativity demands nothing less than all you have. Talent alone is never enough.
Erica Jong -
Anger is really disappointed hope.
Erica Jong
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We've lost more men to homosexuality than we ever did in two world wars.
Erica Jong -
Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry.
Erica Jong -
Hate generalizes; love is particular.
Erica Jong -
I have a very sensitive nose. I identify with dogs. I understand the world through my nose.
Erica Jong