the islands of Italy combine all the elements - fire, water, earth, and air - and that is irresistible.

If there is one lesson Rome teaches, it is that matter is good; in Rome the holy and the homely rise and converge.

Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

There is something worse than dying, and that is humiliation - at least so it seemed to me.

There are no inanimate objects.

Every generation reinvents the wheel - and in the process it often adds to rather than subtracts from a woman's burdens.

The past is a sorry country.