George Eliot

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.

What people don't understand about Sarah Palin is that she is a rancher's wife. From Alberta down to Texas I've known women like that: good common sense, bright and vilified by city people.