When it seemed like I was going to really have to be there at Todd's [Willingham] execution, I don't think I could have done it. I think I began to distance myself. I didn't visit as often; I didn't write as often. This was kind of after my conversation with [fire science expert] Gerald Hurst. And the [car] accident made sure that I didn't have to go up there. But I think he and I both shared that.

The fantasy of the wedding day is that it represents undeniable public and private truth that you have been chosen. For that one day, you are the most valuable creature in the world - a treasure, a princess, a prize.

I am the planet's most affectionate life-form, something like the cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle.

I cannot overstate the power of libraries in my life.

To my taste, the men in Rome are ridiculously, hurtfully, stupidly beautiful. More beautiful even than Roman women, to be honest. Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say-- no detail spared in the quest for perfection. They’re like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.

I was perfectly happy in my boring life before you came along.

People will always want intimacy with one chosen person and you cannot have intimacy without privacy, which is why couples draw circles of privacy around themselves. They demand that family, neighbors and the law respect their union, and that is why we have marriage.