Everything has to be clean and orderly when I sit down to write. I have candles going, and small objects that remind me of what I am working on, or bring me into the world of the character.
Looking back, now, I realize that you only ever need one person who lights up that way when you enter a room. One person is all it takes to give a kid confidence.
Love has a funny way of showing up when you aren’t looking for it and didn’t plan on it.
Food was celebration, conversation, and nourishment. The table is where the big decisions of the family are made and all the arguing takes place.
I look at my roommates who are so proud of me that it makes me proud.
When people are filled to the brim with love, they are their most beautiful.
There’s nothing an artist needs more – even more than excellent tools and stamina – than a deadline.
I love rhinestones, faux jewelry.
Food is so important – it sustains us, it provides a social focal point, and it is fun. I cannot unravel the difference between love in my family and the preparation of food because they are so closely woven.
I have held the following jobs: office temp, ticket seller in movie theatre, cook in restaurant, nanny, and phone installer at the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
If a man walks in beauty, he will create, and when he creates, he prospers.
Whever I came into the room, she’d light up, so happy to see me. No one ever in the course of my entire life was ever as happy to see me as she was. Looking back, now, I realize that you only ever need one person who lights up that way when you enter a room. One person is all it takes to give a kid confidence.
She told me something that has stayed with me. Ferber said, ‘Beware the clowns.’ The leaders who start out as jokes – people make fun of them, they’re caricatures, cartoons in newspapers, and people decide they are harmless. Those men are the most dangerous. The day comes when they use their power against their own people.” Alda.
You just do your best, and life will follow.
This is my Italy, she thought. The power and beauty of the antiquities, the detailed frescos, the imposing statuaries carved of milk white granite, Don Martinelli’s hammered gold chalice, the glorious tones of the music, the Italy of Puccini and Verdi, Caruso and Toscanini, not the Italy of the shattered spirits in Hoboken and the drunken, desperate Anna Buffa. This was the Italy that fed her soul, where hope was restored and broken hearts were mended in the hands of great artists.
If you truly love someone, when he is cut, you bleed.
Nobody ever told me that motherhood was temporary. You think you have years and years with them, but the truth is, you don’t.
Enza studied the photograph of her parents on their wedding day as if it were a map. In a sense it was, as they were creating a destination, a life together.
Whatever it is that you’re feeling, whatever it is you have a question about, whatever it is that you long to know, there is some book, somewhere, with the key. You just have to search for it.
The distance between the haves and the have-nots is a train ride.