Italians' relationship to food is loving, informal, and gay.

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

Grief does not end and love does not die and nothing fills its graven place. With grace, pain is transmuted into the gold of wisdom and compassion and the lesser coin of muted sadness and resignation; but something leaden of it remains, to become the kernel arond which more pain accretes (a black pearl): one pain becomes every other pain ... unless one strips away, one by one, the layers of pain to get to the heart of the pain - and this causes more pain, pain so intense as to feel like evisceration.

Belief sometimes precedes understanding; faith sometimes precedes scientific evidence.

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

There are no original ideas. There are only original people.

Collecting is like sex; satisfaction renews and creates new appetites.