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of all the foolish Fears of Humankind, Fear of the Future is by far the most foolish.
Erica Jong -
I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.
Erica Jong
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Eating is never so simple as hunger.
Erica Jong -
Most sex doesn't really bring people together. You have to reach a certain level of connection, I think, and that's pretty rare.
Erica Jong -
I don't think you will ever fully understand how you've touched my life and made me who I am. I don't think you could ever know just how truly special you are that even on the darkest nights you are my brightest star
Erica Jong -
I don't believe in organized religion. I believe that people should try to connect with their own life force and let it lead them to do with their lives what they will find satisfying.
Erica Jong -
Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
Erica Jong -
I look forward and see myself look back.
Erica Jong
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The problem with feminism in the second wave was that we fought so much among ourselves, and I think we did so much damage to the movement... and I think the next wave, the third wave, is women mentoring younger women and women helping younger women to enter the political process and the writing world.
Erica Jong -
Allow me to put the record straight. I am forty-six and have been for some years past.
Erica Jong -
Souls have neither Sex nor Colour.
Erica Jong -
We all carry the Houses of our Youth inside, and our Parents, too, grown small enough to fit within our Hearts.
Erica Jong -
People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas.
Erica Jong -
There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh.
Erica Jong
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In a world not made for women, criticism and ridicule follow us all the days of our lives. Usually they are indications that we are doing something right.
Erica Jong -
But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.
Erica Jong -
I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading.
Erica Jong -
we need poetry most at those moments when life astounds us with losses, gains, or celebrations. We need it most when we are most hurt, most happy, most downcast, most jubilant. Poetry is the language we speak in times of greatest need. And the fact that it is an endangered species in our culture tells us that we are in deep trouble.
Erica Jong -
It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.
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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There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.
Erica Jong -
It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.
Erica Jong -
If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.
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