In many ways, a degree in the history of ideas is the ideal training for an aspiring writer.

Everything we say is a story. But nothing we say is just a story.

I wish I had the power to flip my reality upside down like an hourglass, and that life wasn't a finite affair, but rather a perpetually recurring passage through a hole in time.

While at Oxford in 1999, I met Jonathan Fortier, who is a Montreal-born Canadian. Despite the challenges of a transatlantic relationship, we remained keen on each other and eventually married in 2002.

You owe me nothing, but I want everything.

But he is an Italian," was Umberto's sensible reply. "He doesn't care if you break some law a little bit, as long as you wear beautiful shoes. Are you wearing beautiful shoes? Are you wearing the shoes I gave you?...principessa?" I looked down at my flip-flops. "I guess I'm toast.

By the time we left college, I had become my own image: a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Kinda cute, but still a weed.