The Villa in Italy

Eram pequenos nadas que faziam com que a vida valesse afinal a pena.

Podes viver a tua vida para agradar os outros e nunca te sentires completamente bem, totalmente viva, ou podes viver a vida que queres para agradar a ti própria.

Observou a doce ondulação das águas a rebentar na praia. Porque é que o mar sempre em movimento era tão calmante, tão infinitamente sedutor?

You can live your life to please others, and will never be quite well, never be totally alive, or you can live the life you want, to please yourself,’ she’d said to Delia. Delia had been disbelieving, alarmed. ‘What shall I do if I don’t sing? It’s all I can do, and I love music.’ ‘Sing something entirely different,

It was the little nothings that made life worth living, in the end. Then

It only takes clear thinking and energy to change a life for the better, to set it off in a new direction.”’ ‘She

Porque é que fazemos as coisas que fazemos? Porque é que damos tantas vezes cabo das nossas vidas fazendo coisas que na altura parecem fazer sentido apesar de uma vozinha nos murmorar ao ouvido que estamos a cometer um grande erro?

because my grandma was certainly a looker

Biscotti,’ said Lucius. ‘Hard as bricks, break your teeth if you bite into them. You dip one in the wine — it’s a dessert wine, quite sweet — and let it soften. Then you eat it.

next to the horse was an army lorry, symbol of war and a modern world that had far more violence in it than the gun-toting pioneers could have dreamt of.

Why is it that the nicest men always end up in the hands of ghastly women?

It all goes into one’s brain in a kind of porridge, and then comes out in a thousand different shapes.’ Jessica

It is the eye and mind of the beholder that determines what we see and believe, not the object of our contemplation in itself.’ ‘I

Modern sins are perhaps beyond the compass of the church.

it is dangerous to the spirit and to our well-being to let our thoughts and memories wander unchecked, so they get the better of us.’ ‘Not

what shovels we can find