I Could Not Have Said it Better, Thank You Mr. Stone

"Tuscany is a state of grace.  The countryside is so lovingly designed that the eye sweeps the mountains and valleys without stumbling over a single stone.  The lilt of the rolling green hills, the upsurging cypresses, the terraces sculptured by generations that have handled the rocks with skillful tenderness, the fields geometrically juxtaposed as though drawn by a draftsman for beauty as well as productivity; the battlements of castles on the hills, their tall towers standing gray-blue and golden tan among the forest of trees, the air of such clarity that every sod of earth stands out in dazzling detail.  On both sides of the road the grape-heavy vines are espaliered between the horizontal branches of silver-green olive trees, composing orchards of webbed design, rich in intimation of wine, olive oil and lacy-leaf poetry."

"His David,.........a glorious creation capable of beauty, strength, courage, wisdom, faith in his own kind, with a brain and will and inner power to fashion a world filled with the fruit of man's creative intellect.  David would be Apollo, but considerably more;  Hercules, but considerably more;  Adam, but considerably more;  the most fully realized man the world had yet seen, functioning in a rational and humane world."

"Because the Madonna was gazing down on her son, all who looked must turn to her face, to see the sadness, the compassion for all men's sons, asking with tender despair, 'What could I have done to save him?"  And from the depth of her love, 'What purpose has all this served, if man cannot be saved?'  All who saw would feel how insupportably heavy was her son's dead body on her lap, how much heavier was the burden in her heart."
                                     --Irving Stone "The Agony and the Ecstasy"