Don't stay in a bad situation - whether it is a relationship or a job - out of fear of failure. It's not a failure to walk away and choose to be happy. It takes a lot of courage.

Reckless action is worse than wise restraint.

One is but a shade of the other.

Even the good angels, I think, would inspire in humans some sort of fear.

If I'm not writing, I'm not fully living. It has become the essential element that defines who I am.

I live in New York now, and miss France quite a bit. Of course, the reality of living in a small village in the south of France was very different than the fantasy I had of living in France. Over the years I spent there, that fantasy was worn away and I found a more realistic version of France than the one I began with. I wouldn't say the spell ever goes away, but transforms. Now that I understand French culture more intimately, and speak fluent French, I have a different, more solid, relationship to the country.

I was fifteen then, too young to fall in-love. Or maybe it is only then, with dew of childhood still in my eyes, that I was capable of such love. I will never know, of course.