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.

Memory is, of course, a trickster.

Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign.

What has impressed me the most about the Italians whose tables we've sat at is that they are traditional cooks but also outrageously innovative. These people are wild improvisers.

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.

Indecision is a virus that can run through an army and destroy its will to win or even to survive.

The words 'forse che si,' 'forse che no', 'perhaps yes,' 'perhaps no,' repeat along all paths.