It's kind of amazing that people will travel because of a book. I admire that.

I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.

Sometimes the valley below is like a bowl filled up with fog. I can see hard green figs on two trees and pears on a tree just below me. A fine crop coming in. May summer last a hundred years.

The urge to travel feels magnetic. Two of my favorite words are linked: departure time. And travel whets the emotions, turns upside down the memory bank, and the golden coins scatter.

Anytime the perfume of orange and lemon groves wafts in the window; the human body has to feel suffused with a languorous well-being.

Although I am a person who expected to be rooted in one spot forever, as it has turned out I love having the memories of living in many places.

Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full or choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower, read a history of Byzantium, stare for one hour at the face of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Madonna dei fusi.' You open, as in childhood, and--for a time--receive this world. There's visceral aspect, too--the huntress who is free. Free to go, free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth.