In the face of evil, detachment is a dubious virtue.

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

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

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.

Autobiography is a preemptive strike against biographers.

I don't think I know a single woman who knows what she looks like.

Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.