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.
Erica JongRead
Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry provides solace and expression during significant emotional events in our lives.
The quote emphasizes the role of poetry as a companion in our most profound emotional experiences, such as loss, joy, and love. It suggests that poetry captures the essence of our feelings and helps us articulate what we go through during life's pivotal moments, highlighting its significance as a form of emotional expression and connection.
Themes
PoetryEmotionsLifeFriendshipLoveBirthLoss
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of art in processing grief.
More from Erica Jong
All quotes →I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.
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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.
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My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.
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Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
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I believe that women should live for love, for motherhood and for intellect, and I believe we shouldn't have to choose. And I believe that's always been difficult for women, to express themselves intellectually, maternally, and passionately.
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Joy is the zest that you get out of using your talents, your understanding, the totality of your being, for great aims...That's the kind of feeling that goes with creativity. That's why I say the courage to create. Creation does not come out of simply what you're born with. That must be united with your courage, both of which cause anxiety, but also great joy.
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If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.
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There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.
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Scientists do stand on the shoulders of giants, just as do writers. Conversely, in the arts we do make discoveries. We do refine our tools. So I am arguing with, or at least playing with, the idea that art never improves.
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Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn't embrace it. I succumbed to it.
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Real mathematics must be justified as art if it can be justified at all.
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