The Italians have their priorities right: They're driven, they do their work, but they really enjoy the day-to-day and they don't put off the enjoyme….

I find that other countries have this or this, but Italy is the only one that has it all for me. The culture, the cuisine, the people, the landscape,….

What has impressed me the most about the Italians whose tables we've sat at is that they are traditional cooks but also outrageously innovative. Thes….

Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one..

I'm just fascinated by houses. In another life, I'd have probably trained as an architect. If I had enough money, I'd collect them like other people ….

A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice..

There is no technique, there is just the way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?.

Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place. Any arbit….

One of those flash epiphanies of travel, the realization that worlds you'd love vibrantly exist outside your ignorance of them. The vitality of many ….

Poems give you the lives of others and then circle in on your own inner world..

Everything I pick up seems to lure me away. Everything I do in my daily life begins to feel like striking wet matches. The need to travel is a myster….

Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look ….

It's kind of amazing that people will travel because of a book. I admire that..

The undulent landscape looks serene in every direction. Honey-colored farmhouses, gently placed in hollows, rise like thick loaves of bread set out t….

It’s daunting to find the language so foreign, so distant, but also so thrilling. One is absolved of responsibility when the language is incomprehens….

I loved every place I lived and traveled. London, Paris, Rome, Venice. I fell hard for Central America and Mexico. In each country, I had fantasies t….

The longer you are in a place, the more you get under its layers..

Although I am a person who expected to be rooted in one spot forever, as it has turned out I love having the memories of living in many places..

The words 'forse che si,' 'forse che no', 'perhaps yes,' 'perhaps no,' repeat along all paths..

Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different..

All afternoon in the deck chair, I try to describe to my notebook the colors of the water and sky. How to translate sunlight into words?.