Turning toward my flat, the cobblestones caught the afternoon sun and an old man smiled at me. These things, so simple and so inconsequential, warmed me unexpectedly, and a wave of something that felt like hope rose up within me.

To me, a good actor is misunderstood and underappreciated, and I sometimes think the problem is with the word itself. Because the word actor connotes acting rather than action, it carries a suggestion of make-believe or pretend when, in fact, the actor’s job is not to act like a character but to act as that character.

those Italian gesticulations that are sometimes whimsical and other times savage.

The effect on me was immense. What happens in the body during times like this? What is it that was dormant and that comes to life? I’d seen a thousand movies, but it was in witnessing the making of one that I discovered what I wanted for my future.

“We complement each other well; it’s aimlessness that I can’t stand, not change.” “Don’t you ever dream of something radically different, though?” She took a sip of tea. “Yes, sometimes. With all this talk of women’s lib, I’ve half a mind to get a postgraduate degree. For someone like me, that’d be rather subversive, don’t you think?”

“You’re saying it doesn’t matter what happens?” I asked. “I’m saying it’s you who decides what matters,” he said.

met Masolino late in the afternoon, and it felt like the first date of many.

As I stood there, I felt alone but not lonely, at peace with myself but also restless, eager to keep going. I also felt a sense of place root inside me, and I remember thinking, perhaps for the first time in my life, that I might never move again.

I hated the vulnerability of him seeing so plainly that there was a big space between the person I was and the person I was trying so hard to be.