Allow me to put the record straight. I am forty-six and have been for some years past.

I know some good marriages-marriages where both people are just trying to get through their days by helping each other, being good to each other.

I mostly hate organized religion, which I think is a force for the oppression of women and creates warfare.

the unconscious of an artist is her greatest treasure. It is what transmutes the dross of autobiography into the gold of myth.

I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading.

what storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank.

But come back in November or December, in February or March, when the fog, la nebbia, settles upon the city like a marvelous monster, and you will have little trouble believing that things can appear and disappear in this labyrinthine city, or that time here could easily slip in its sprockets and take you, willingly or unwillingly, back.