Persecution always acts as a jell for members of cults; it proves to them, in the absence of history, liturgy, tradition, and doctrine, that they are God’s chosen.

I don’t think I know a single woman who knows what she looks like.

Every generation reinvents the wheel – and in the process it often adds to rather than subtracts from a woman’s burdens.

Women’s propensity to share confidences is universal. We confirm our reality by sharing.

Italy offers one the most priceless of all one’s possessions – one’s own soul.

Italians do not regard food as merely fuel. They regard it as medicine for the soul, one of life’s abiding pleasures.

Nothing is more democratic, less judgmental, than water. Water doesn’t care whether flesh is withered or fresh; it caresses aged flesh and firm flesh with equal love.

I love medieval cities; they do not clamor for attention; they possess their souls – their riches – in quiet; formal, courteous, they reveal themselves slowly, stone by stone, garden by garden; hidden treasures wait calmly to be loved and yield to introspective wandering.

There are places one comes home to that one has never been to...

There is something worse than dying, and that is humiliation – at least so it seemed to me...