This Is My Secret: The Blog and Website of Writer Kristin Cashore

The Italian cover of Fire, published by De Agostini. Click to enbiggen. The text means something along the lines of, "Her mystique is a gift as sharp as a blade." :D ------------>

My subject heading is a David Gray song (click here to listen) that popped into my head the instant I walked into my hotel room in Lisbon and saw the view of the river. (Lisbon is situated on the Atlantic, and on the Tagus River, which flows into the Atlantic, as per this map.)

I wasn't prepared for the beauty of this city. I've heard San Francisco compared to Sydney, but why have I never heard it compared to Lisbon? I can see the Sydney/San Francisco connection, which has to do both with attractiveness and with the progressive culture, but LISBON is a city of extreme hills and close knit buildings and colorful rowhouses like San Francisco's (though the buildings are older and more European in feel, naturally), not to mention a gorgeous reddish-gold bridge that made me blink when …

¡Hola amigos!

Here's something I saw written on a wall inside a building today in Madrid:

I have sometimes dreamt that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards -- their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble -- the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have love reading.”

-Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), fromHow Should One Read a Book?

Some random thoughts today...

When the weather outside is frightful, the weather is even more frightful at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

On the weekend in Paris, I ordered a crepe on the street with ham and cheese, and accidentally also ordered it with egg -- perhaps I tripped and cried out "Oeuf!" while I was ordering? Such are the perils of trying to communicate in a foreign land. That&#…