The magical descriptions of Italy and hilarious observations about love, travel, natives and foreigners in Love in Idleness are but a few of its many pleasures. Amanda Craig has created a hot shimmery climate in which a cast of old friends, quirky family members and naughty children who make love potions come to know themselves and their hearts. A delightful brew.

This was life, I supposed, running and running and running, and realizing along the way that the phantom was getting closer.

From early on I valued the gift of memory above all others. I understood that as we grow older we carry a whole nation around inside of us, places and ways that have disappeared, believing that they are ours, that we alone hold the torch for our past, that we are as impenetrable as stone.

It was about forgiving. I understood that forgiveness itself was strong, durable—like strands of a web weaving around us, holding us.

My god has always been a laissez-faire deity, giving you the initial goods and sending you on to make your way.

Our mission in life is not to discover our fate as we go along, or even to procreate, but rather to fill up the endless gray void that is time.

We're only passers-by, and all you can do is love what you have in your life. A person has to fight the meanness that sometimes comes with you when you're born, sometimes grows if you aren't in lucky surroundings. It's our challenge to fend it off, leave it behind us choking and gasping for breath in the mud. It's our task to seek out something with truth for us, no matter if there is a hundred-mile obstacle course in the way, or a ramshackle old farmhouse that binds and binds.