Erica Jong Quotes
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I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of the bathtub plug a man?
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Beware of the man who praises women's liberation; he is about to quit his job.
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The only people worth writing about are those about whom the last word cannot be said.
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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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My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.
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It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.
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Court, in our society, is often the last resort of stubbornness.
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Women who bear children before they establish serious habits of work, may never establish them at all.
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All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.
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I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.
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At fifty the madwoman in the attic breaks loose, stomps down the stairs, and sets fire to the house. She won't be imprisoned anymore.
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Each of us only feels the torn lining of his own coat and sees the wholeness of the other person's.
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There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.
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Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
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I know so many women in their fifties, sixties and seventies who delight in being on their own. It's amazing. They don't see any stigma attached to it. We don't need a man to prove our identity anymore.
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biography is essentially a collaborative art, the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.
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You must have a certain amount of maturity to be a poet. Seldom do sixteen-year-olds know themselves well enough.
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What was time but a convention, a habit of mind, a custom of dress?
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It's important to know what you're going to spend your life on, and the only way you're going to find that is by connecting with the force inside yourself.
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I see that the greatest thing about getting older is how your judgment changes and how you come to understand the cycles of life. And you keep having these amazing flashes of understanding.
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The absolute bedrock of our independence is having control over our own bodies. You cannot be independent if the government or someone else says whether or not you can use birth control. Unless you're in charge of your body, you're not in charge of anything. I think that's really the bottom line of feminism.
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The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.
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Beware the Lure of a handsome Face, the all too ready Assumption that the lovely Façade must needs have lovely Chambers within; for as 'tis with Great Houses, so, too, with Great Men.
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What storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank.