Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.

It's horrible getting older. I mean, it's wonderful because you see the circles of life get completed. But it's horrible losing your looks.

Back in the days when men were hunters and chest beaters and women spent their whole lives worrying about pregnancy or dying in childbirth, they often had to be taken against their will. Men complained that women were cold, unresponsive, frigid... They wanted their women wanton. They wanted their women wild. Now women were finally learning to be wanton and wild - and what happened? The men wilted.

It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.

Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

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.

How could one create life with someone who represented death?