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"Most people in this country are looking for literature that is useful. They feel that just exploring their feelings is good enough - they should be reading about leveraged buy-outs or how to get thin. We live in a culture that is so absolutely, madly focused on commercialism and on creating money and completely turned away from any other kind of creative value. People don't generally turn to poetry unless they're bereaved or have fallen in love. Or in adolescence, when their feelings are very strong and turbulent. I think most of us are dying for lack of spirit in this culture."
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"Odo had not tried to renew the basic relationships of music, when she renewed the relationships of men. She had always respected the necessary. The Settlers of Anarres had left the laws of man behind them, but had brought the laws of harmony along."

"Lash had been explaining to her that it's impolite to refer to an African American as a nigga, unless one was another African American, when Troy Lee came in and said, 'She only speaks Cantonese.''She does not. She keeps coming in and saying 'What's up my nigga?'''Oh yeah. She does that to me, too. Did you give her a pound?''No. I didn't give her a pound, motherfucker. She called me a nigga.''Well, she's not going to quit unless you give her a pound. It's just the way she rolls.''That's some bullshit, Troy.''It's her couch."

"Culture is a symbolic veil with which we hide our animal nature from ourselves - and other animals."

"A gold tooth is to some blacks, what braces are to all whites."

"She said: Sheriff how come you to let crime get so out of hand in your county? Sounded like a fair question I reckon. Maybe it was a fair question. Anyway I told her, I said: It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Any time you quit hearin Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight."

"Any country where I am not bored is a country that teaches me nothing."

"Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters."
Explore more quotes by Erica Jong

"It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present, how much of daily life is usually spent making plans and attempting to control the future. Never mind that you have no control over it. The idea of the future is our greatest entertainment, amusement, and time-killer."

"I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am."

"I know some good marriages-marriages where both people are just trying to get through their days by helping each other being good to each other."

"The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad."

"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads."
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