Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.

A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.

A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.

I don't want to be in my car all day. I love getting up in the morning in Venice and walking my dogs down to the cafe to get my tea, and then perhaps going to a bookstore and sitting and reading, then walking to the beach.

I came to Venice for the first time in 1968 and was lucky enough to make the acquaintanceship, and then the friendship, of two Venetians, Roberta and Franco, who remain my best friends here after almost 50 years.

My husband and I went to Venice, Italy, for our first-year anniversary and spent a day on the Island of Burano. There, we had lunch at the famed Trattoria al Gatto Nero da Ruggero - one of the most incredible meals of our lives.

For our anniversary, my wife and I went to see Godzilla, and then we ate at Barnyard Venice, and it was like, 'We are crazy! The Kardashians have to keep up with us!'

I've been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators - Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement they engendered. I'm continually inspired by Rembrandt, Breughel (I've wondered whether his brilliant "Tower of Babel" had inspired Tolkien's description of Minas Tyrith), Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Turner; it's not necessarily that they influence my work in any particular direction, more that their example raises my spirits, re-affirms my belief in the power of images to move and delight us, and shows me how much further I have to go, how much is possible. Having visited Venice and Florence for the first time, I am besotted with the Italian Renaissance artists - Botticelli, Bellini, da Vinci and others. Their work is calm, controlled, and yet each face and landscape contains such passion. In Botticelli's paintings, every pebble and every leaf is rendered with a religious devotion; there is reverence inherent in paying such close attention to every stone, turning painting itself into a form of worship, an act of prayer.

A realist in Venice would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.

A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.

I came to Venice for the first time in 1968 and was lucky enough to make the acquaintanceship and then the friendship of two Venetians Roberta and Franco who remain my best friends here after almost 50 years.

I will never forget experiencing Venice for the first time. It feels like you are transported to another time - the art music food and pure romance in the air is like no other place.

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.

The cool parts - the parts that have won Dubai its reputation as 'the Vegas of the Middle East' or 'the Venice of the Middle East' or 'the Disney World of the Middle East if Disney World were the size of San Francisco and out in a desert' - have been built in the last ten years.

I don't want to be in my car all day. I love getting up in the morning in Venice and walking my dogs down to the cafe to get my tea and then perhaps going to a bookstore and sitting and reading then walking to the beach.

Venice is the perfect place for a phase of art to die. No other city on earth embraces entropy quite like this magical floating mall.