“Like Venice, Italy, this is a place of fleeting beauty. The knowledge that we won't be here long gives everyone an intense appetite for living.”

“Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don't really want to live in it.”

“Is everyone who lives in Ignorance like you?" asked Milo."Much worse," he said longingly. "But I don't live here. I'm from a place very far away called Context.”

“My favourite setting is Italy, specifically Venice, because it is there that I met my husband, who is Venetian. I used it as the setting for Virtue and Vice, Enchantment in Venice, and Seduced by Innocence. Apart from Venice, my favourite city is Rome.”

“There are comforts in knowing the boundaries of the place you live. Everyone here seems to behave like things are endless.”

“Imagination runs through the places where we live like water. We need both things-a living knowledge of the land and a live imagination of it and our place in it- if we are going to preserve it.”