A man who has nothing can whistle in a robber's face.
My relationship with my parents is among the greatest gifts of my life.
Deeply affecting and compulsively readable, The Fifty-First State displays Lisa Borders' emotional acuity, first-rate skills as a storyteller, and profound empathy not only for her two compelling main characters but for an oft-neglected region and a disappearing way of life.
Italians in particular are seen as either benign and child-like (the sweet old nonna with her meatballs), menacing mobsters, or hyper-sexualized housewives and gigolos; the kind of nourishment I'm looking for doesn't lie in any of these stereotypes.
I realized that you have to deal with a lot of baggage when you write about your own era, that it's harder to separate what is actually compelling from what is interesting simply because it mattered to you at the time.
I think that's actually what draws me to family stories: the various roles we each play with each member of our families, and how different they can be from who we are with our friends and partners and lovers. I'm endlessly fascinated by how we navigate these family dynamics; they are the dramas each of us live out day after day, often in ways we don't even realize.
I don't come from a family of readers - in fact, my parents are unable to read the books in English.
I don't feel that I decided deliberately I'm going to write something and have it stand alone. Somewhere by the end I think it would probably revert to imagery.
I lost a horse today. ' 'That sounds careless. What happened?' 'She jumped off a cliff. ' 'A cliff! Is that normal?
Of all tools, an observatory is the most sublime. . . . What is so good in a college as an observatory? The sublime attaches to the door and to the first stair you ascent, that this is the road to the stars.
I believe that eclecticism is a virtue. It may not be a word, but its definitely a virtue.