Food is my drug of choice.

I love medieval cities; they do not clamor for attention; they possess their souls - their riches - in quiet; formal, courteous, they reveal themselves slowly, stone by stone, garden by garden; hidden treasures wait calmly to be loved and yield to introspective wandering.

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).

Autobiography is a preemptive strike against biographers.

it's perfectly possible to hate one's fat and to love one's body at the same time.

Unhappiness makes beggars or accountants of us all.

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