“There is so much jasmine and nightshade in the garden that we all wake with lyrical headaches.”

“[As Garibaldi says,] 'Sleep, my dear Chevalley, sleep, that is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate anyone who tries to wake them...”

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

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

“We were given one country and we've set up in another.”

“We are walking on the foundations of literature, up the steep, stony path in the fiery heat.”

“There are reasons we congregate in these hot spots- to worship beauty and to feel its effects light up the electrolytes in the bloodstream.”