Like poetry, in times of intense emotion the image returns to me. Like poetry, it stroked my soul and, by turns, lulled and stoked my senses.

The palace started as a single vaulted room and grew in proportion to my despair. It began as an exercise to keep my mind from its melancholy, then it became a dream and a necessity....

My head was a desolate place and as barren as the bare hills of Le Marche. Until I began to build in it, only vultures nested there.

I knew, as every peasant does, that land can never be truly owned. We are the keepers of the soil, the curators of trees.