I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple.

How can I shed tears for a man I should never have allowed to touch me in any way?

Poppies bleed petals of sheer excess. You and I, this sweet battle ground.

My house is modern, but I like my writing room to be old fashioned. I write on a little wooden secretary desk.

When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

We strive for beauty and balance, the sensual over the sentimental.

His voice was cloves and nightingales, it took us to spice markets in the Celebs, we drifted with him on a houseboat beyond the Coral Sea. We were like cobras following a reed flute.