Francesca Marciano quotes:

Whenever she walked along the streets of Manhattan, she looked at all the different faces coming toward her and, despite their different features and colors, she regarded them all as Americans.

It's not easy to give up something you've had all your life.

It would drive me crazy to be a guest in my own house.

You chose to live here now. You should try to live in the present.

Telling the truth can be a dirty job.

No use crying over spilled milk.

Why is it you can never hope to describe the emotion Africa creates? You are lifted. Out of whatever pit, unbound from whatever tie, released from whatever fear. You are lifted and you see it all from above.

When you leave Africa, as the plane lifts, you feel that more than leaving a continent you're leaving a state of mind. Whatever awaits you at the other end of your journey will be of a different order of existence.

Passion - eventually it cools.

When people die and especially when they die tragically, others can't help but get carried away. They come up with their implausible interpretation and usually resort to cheap psychology. A sense of fatalism is the only form of relief left.

Suddenly it all seemed luminously clear. Love had very little to do with fear and emotional sabotage; love had to do with trust.

I'd rather stay asleep than have to learn all those frightening secrets.

You know, when you're unhappy you don't have the strength left to take care of others. But it doesn't mean you don't love them.

Jealousy is a disease, it's like a poison.

Children know so little, they must learn quickly to imitate grown-ups whenever they feel unsure in a situation.

It may be possible to forget our past but our past is not going to forget us.

Maybe that's what happens with age, I thought. All your life you force yourself to forget people who have hurt you, but as you get older and weaker their memory surfaces again, like a bubble in the water. You have to surrender, because you feel to tired to fight it and push it down again. And maybe, unexpectedly, you find out that instead, of revamping your anger, those memories produce an unexpected sweetness.

A first kiss is the demarcation line: the same information that a moment ago felt private, all of a suddens seems unfair to withhold. And with that exchange came more.

Love sometimes makes people ruthless in a way that not even hatred can.

What kind of heart does one have to have in order to be able to get rid of these, without regret, as if they were empty beer cans?

I had fallen out of my secure world, precipitated beyond the territories I had only begun to control so skillfully. What a foolish step to take. What an insane move to make.

We knew nothing of loss. Nobody has taught us about pain. Until that moment, death had just amounted to a scary sound.

I can't say why some memories float and other sink.