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Violence is its own anesthetist. The numbness it induces feels very much like calm.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Danger Pitfalls Way
One can be tired of Rome after three weeks and feel one has exhausted it; after three months one feels that one has not even scratched the surface of Rome; and after six months one wishes never to leave it.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Rome Tired Wish
Children hold us hostage; they represent our commitment to the future.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Children Commitment Hostage
The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and the lesser good.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Evil Pain Struggle
I don’t think I know a single woman who knows what she looks like.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Looks Single Women Thinking
To surrender one’s vulnerable body to water has always seemed to me a limpid act of will that has no coutnerpart or equal, unless it is sex.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Sex Sports Water
it’s perfectly possible to hate one’s fat and to love one’s body at the same time.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Body Hate Weight
Autobiography is a preemptive strike against biographers.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Artistic Autobiography Strikes
my love of water … is mingled with and almost indistinguishable from a fear of water (I can float in a vertical position – I enter a fugue state – but I cannot bear to bury my face in water).
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Bears Face Water
Beware of people carrying ideas. Beware of ideas carrying people.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Carrying Ideas People
Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Children Goodness Responsibility
Kindness and intelligence don’t always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Imagination Kindness Pitfalls
Rome is all things high and low. It is like God, it accommodates so much.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

All Lows Rome Things
the gardens of our childhood are all beautiful.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Beautiful Childhood Garden
Illness is regarded as a crime, and crime is regarded as illness.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Crime Illness Regard
There are no inanimate objects.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Inanimate Object Objects
Facts mean nothing to wounded feelings.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Facts Feelings Mean
My mother was my first jealous lover.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

First Jealous Mother
Persecution always acts as a jell for members of cults; it proves to them, in the absence of history, liturgy, tradition, and doctrine, that they are God’s chosen.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Absence Doctrine Tradition
The real reason women fall in love abroad is not that they are free of domestic inhibitions but that they translate their love of stone and place into love of flesh. … Is this true?
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Falling Love Real Travel
Italians’ relationship to food is loving, informal, and gay.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Food Gay Informal Relationship
Weather creates character.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Character Create Weather
I love medieval cities; they do not clamor for attention; they possess their souls – their riches – in quiet; formal, courteous, they reveal themselves slowly, stone by stone, garden by garden; hidden treasures wait calmly to be loved and yield to introspective wandering.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Cities Garden Travel
Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Art Inspirational Reality
Food is my drug of choice.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Choices Drug Food
There are no original ideas. There are only original people.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Ideas Original People
I made the mistake of thinking that if you add up the past, you sum up the future; I forgot how frequently life astonishes us.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Mistake Past Thinking