Cafe De Flore speaks of love, its joys, its pains and its dramas - to love and to lose. This story upset me, I was upside-down, in the depths of myself.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm such an avid magazine reader - music, art, beauty magazines - and I found that food and restaurants were pouring into everything I cared about. Whether it was the pop-up concept, or some mysterious mini-mall restaurant, I got swept up in the sexy romance of the food movement.
'Et Tu, Babe' was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer's life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing; it's my whole life.
Love of place is one of the characteristics I enjoy most about novelists.
Somehow, the French got this idea of the starving artist. Very romantic, except it's not so romantic for the starving artist.
I wrote my first sucio story, as I call them, in 1997. This was always my 'cheater's book,' my book about sucios desgraciados. My plan was to write a book about how people deal with love and loss.
Truly, love is delightful and pleasant food, supplying, as it does, rest to the weary, strength to the weak, and joy to the sorrowful. It in fact renders the yoke of truth easy and its burden light.
I love the 19th-century idea of the flaneur, the poet wandering through the streets.
The city's contradictions and frailties drive me to the church. The church, in turn, binds my wounds and soothes my troubled heart, and sends me right back out into the city again.
'Bagdad Cafe' was a film that changed many, many people's lives... how they saw themselves and how they looked at their life situation. I thought I made a little movie. All the mail that I get is about how it changed lives, and that's wonderful.
I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that.