From Roman times to the present, Italy has been a country to fall in love with - a tribute to all that is enduring, crazy, pagan, joyous, melancholy, at once banal and divine, in the human spirit.

Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life.

Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.

If you apologize for something that isn't your fault in the first place, you, in effect, confirm their belief that it is your fault.

There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.

The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.

Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?