my love of water ... is mingled with and almost indistinguishable from a fear of water (I can float in a vertical position - I enter a fugue state - but I cannot bear to bury my face in water).

Italians do not regard food as merely fuel. They regard it as medicine for the soul, one of life's abiding pleasures.

The past is a sorry country.

the gardens of our childhood are all beautiful.

The real reason women fall in love abroad is not that they are free of domestic inhibitions but that they translate their love of stone and place into love of flesh. ... Is this true?

I made the mistake of thinking that if you add up the past, you sum up the future; I forgot how frequently life astonishes us.

Rome is all things high and low. It is like God, it accommodates so much.