Da Roma Con Amore

I began to attach myself by so much looking.  Here I was, centred.

Knowledge of Rome must be physical, sweated into the system, worked up into the brain through thinning shoe leather.  Substantiality comes through touch and smell, and taste, the tastes of different dusts.  When it comes to knowing, the senses are more honest than the intelligence.

Seeing is pleasure, but not knowledge.

From A Time in Rome by Elizabeth Bowen, 1959.