I think that being an editor, someone who works with words, is very good training for being a translator because it trains you to be attentive to words in a very specific, very concrete, very literal way.

One naturally identifies to some extent with an "I" female narrator going through something that you recognize whether you've gone through it or not.

I don't have a philosophy. If I had a philosophy, it's that I'm kind of literal minded. For example, I would never translate poetry - it's too hard, there are too many levels. Not that prose doesn't have many levels, but it's more grounded.

I like to think of the individual words, then you put the word in the sentence, then you have to think about what that word means in the sentence, then you have to read the sentence in the paragraph - you're sort of building up like that; that's my philosophy.

I have very strict rules in my head that seem to me to be the way things should sound.

To have the translator be a figure in the book's presentation seems like a big thing, especially for a book that's really popular.

I really had wanted to learn Italian for a long time. I think ever since - or even maybe even before I had read Dante. And I just sort of had this idea that I wanted to read Dante in Italian. And then in my office, we actually had a class - an Italian class.