Erica Jong Quotes
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My generation of young female writers discovered that we could dictate the form and content of our own fiction.
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Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I'm doing something right.
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I knew I was in England by the smell.
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In freeing myself from the romantic dream of finding another man to come along and rescue me, I learned that no one can rescue me except myself.
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Is there no Villain in this World who doth not regard himself as a poor abus'd Innocent, no She-Wolf who doth not think herself a Lamb, no Shark who doth not fancy that she is a Goldfish?
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Poems, like dreams, are a sort of royal road to the unconscious. They tell you what your secret self cannot express.
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of all the foolish Fears of Humankind, Fear of the Future is by far the most foolish.
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... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?
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Memory is the crux of our humanity. Without memory we have no identities. That is really why I am committing an autobiography.
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Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.
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The aim of my writing is to utterly remove the distance between author and reader so that the book becomes a sort of semipermeable membrane through which feelings, ideas, nutrients pass.
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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 by exhortation.
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Language can't be appropriated by one person, one poet. The words belong to all of us.
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And what if I don't want forgiveness?
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I believe I belong to the last literary generation, the last generation, that is, for whom books are a religion.
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Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.
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We write poems as leaves give oxygen - so we can breathe.
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I think a lot of people, when they read about a woman who acknowledges her sexuality and her feelings, get really scared. They say they want to be fearless, but in reality they're terrified. If they acknowledge their deepest feelings, they might have to change their lives.
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Why do analysts always answer a question with a question?
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I am never so calm as after I have written. And the next morning I will feel the familiar anxiety and I will have to begin the process all over again.
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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.
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The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton's first law of jealousy.
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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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Art is always an energy exchange.