Perhaps it is because Venice is both liquid and solid, both air and stone, that it somehow combines all the elements crucial to make our imaginations ignite and turn fantasies into realities.

Every time I catch myself saying, "Oh no, you shouldn't try that," I think, "Yes, I should."

Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need them at the times when they need them ... Cosmic forces guide such passings-along.

As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.

Each artist or writer who works in Venice comes to believe that the city yields its most special secret to him or her alone.

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.

We all have fantasies about sex that are more perfect than anything in reality.