If you want to know the world, sometimes you have to get out and roll around.

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

Then again, you cannot stop the flood of desire as it moves through the world, inappropriate though it may sometimes be. It is the prerogative of all humans to make ludicrous choices, to fall in love with the most unlikely of partners, and to set themselves up for the most predicatable of calamities.

the great lack of parity between husbands and wives has always been spawned by the disproportionate degree of self-sacrifice that women are willing to make on behalf of those they love.

Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.

[Italian men] are like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.

Being a woman did not look enviable to me, even when it looked admirable. It looked like nonstop sacrifice and service. Because it was. Being a woman seemed vulnerable and sad. Even the strong women I knew - and they were all strong - had earned their strength through enduring huge disappointments and tremendous struggles.