What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.
Erica Jongthe unconscious of an artist is her greatest treasure. It is what transmutes the dross of autobiography into the gold of myth.
Erica JongYou must have a certain amount of maturity to be a poet. Seldom do sixteen-year-olds know themselves well enough.
Erica JongPoetry is the inner life of a culture, its nervous system, its deepest way of imagining the world. A culture that ignores its poets, chokes off its nervous system and becomes mortally ill.
Erica Jong