Enough fine weather and money and a few memorable meals make any place desirable.

Books remember all the things you cannot contain.

Unrequited love–plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing–turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn't want, couldn't use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness.

You can't out-travel sadness. I travel not to get away from my troubles but to see how they look in front of famous buildings

The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.

Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.

I come from food the way some people come from money. Food was the medium I grew up in, what we talked about, what shaped our days.