Getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are.

Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist.

We have only the language for fun and miserable, and maybe we need language for deep and shallow, meaningful and meaningless.

How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?

Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts.

Never turn down an adventure without a really good reason.