I have no nostalgia for the patriarchy, please believe me. But what I have come to realize is that, when that patriarchic system was (rightfully) dismantled, it was not necessarily replaced by another form of protection. What I mean is--I never thought to ask a suitor the same challenging questions my father might have asked him, in a different age.

Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don't really want to live in it.

Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.

I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.

The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.

There is hardly a more gracious gift that we can offer somebody than to accept them fully, to love them almost despite themselves.

I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.