Erica Jong Quotes
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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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I don't think that sex necessarily produces intimacy.
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Whenever I go anywhere but Italy for a vacation, I always feel vaguely disappointed, as if I have made a mistake.
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A Soul is partly given, partly wrought; remember always that you are the Maker of your own Soul.
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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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I don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish.
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It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write.
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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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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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Nothing you write is ever lost to you. At some other level your mind is working on it.
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To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.
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Isn't it our job to be appalled by our parents? Isn't it every generation's duty to be dismayed by the previous generation? And to assert that we are different - only to discover later that we are distressingly the same?
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Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.
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How could one create life with someone who represented death?
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If we are all made of God, it is our friends who remind us. We pass the gift of God to them. They pass it back to us when we need it most.
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The bruise on the heart which at first feels incredibly tender to the slightest touch eventually turns all the shades of the rainbow and stops aching. We forget about it. We even forget we have hearts until the next time. And then we wonder how we ever could have forgotten. We think this one is better, because, in fact, we cannot fully remember the time before.
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Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.
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Is perception equivalent to existence?
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The Passion that one Soul hath for God cannot be judged by another.
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Men must be stripped of arrogance and women must become independent for any mutually nurturing alliance to endure between the sexes.
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It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.
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Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked. With your own voice,' he said.
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Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile.
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Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.