Together he [Girolamo Savonarola] and his archenemy Lorenzo [de' Medici] would have been the stuff of gargoyles. One could almost imagine the diptych in which their profiles confronted each other, their noses as powerful as their personalities.

So if we could not have love, my husband and I, then at least I could have alchemy.

If grace belongs to God, there are those who say that luck belongs to the Devil and that he looks after his own.

Obsessed? I don't know what the word means. I know there were times when I couldn't think of anything else. I used to stay in every weeknight in the hope that he might get free and call me. It felt like I had a disease I didn't want to get rid of. I suppose that's a definition of obsession, yes.

The Devil may take the reckless, but the good will surely die of boredom. Boredom and frustration.

Missing rubs the soul raw.

But anyone who has been that young knows that the great grief of love is that your body feels the most when it knows the least.