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"You're afraid of criticism,' she says. 'But criticism is a sign of life! You know who doesn't get criticized? Nonentities! Only the dead escape criticism."
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"He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals."

"Some poems are written great, some poems are written swell. But then there are poems that could win a prize in Hell."

"Learn to brush off criticism as easily as you brush aside hollow compliments."

"Many reviews are useless because, while purporting to condemn the book, they only reveal the reviewer's dislike of the kind to which it belongs. Let bad tragedies be censured by those who love tragedy, and bad detective stories by those who love the detective story. Then we shall learn their real faults. Otherwise we shall find epics blamed for not being novels, farces for not being high comedies, novels by James for lacking the swift action of Smollett. Who wants to hear a particular claret abused by a fanatical teetotaller, or a particular woman by a confirmed misogynist?"

"People have boldness to criticize but not to sensitize."

"Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse."

"To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own."

"At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you."
Explore more quotes by Erica Jong

"You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy."

"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."

"In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving - instead of actually getting up and leaving."

"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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