3. Elena Ferrante’s Books I became obsessed with “My Brilliant Friend” and all those [other Neapolitan novels]. Female friendships are so interesting and complicated, and she really seemed to get all the complexities of relationships with girls that are fraught and deep and toxic and nourishing. I’d never seen it depicted in a way that I recognized quite as accurately.

4. Washington Square Park Dog Run My first love was my dog Marley, a yellow Lab/white shepherd mix. When I was living on my own and I didn’t have kids, it was just she and I, and she grew up in the dog run. Nobody’s unhappy in there. Everybody’s laughing, smiling and looking at the dogs together. It’s unfettered by the loneliness that people can feel in New York. Now I have two dogs: Sami, a Brussels Griffon who was a mommy in a puppy mill until they busted the puppy mill, and Niko, a Border collie mix, another rescue dog. Rescuing animals is very important to me.

5. Village Vanguard I was very, very close to my dad [Frank Falco]. I lost him a couple of years ago and it’s still not easy. He was a huge jazz fan, and he and I had gone there a bunch of times together, and they are experiences that loom large still. We saw Billy Eckstine there a thousand years ago, and my dad was just in heaven.

6. Outsider Art Fair It’s a little bit like independent films. When it started out, [the artists] were real outsiders. But now as they’ve become more popular, maybe they’re not quite outsiders anymore. Some of them were mentally ill, some of them were incarcerated, and they made art without rules. And I find it profoundly moving. Many years ago, I fell in love with a painting by Terry Turrell, and I bought it. I’m almost embarrassed, but I have probably 15 pieces of art that he’s made. It gets my heart-rate going when I see a new piece of work of his.

7. ABC Carpet & Home Who doesn’t want to live there? It really feels more like a museum than a store. The sensory of the experience of walking through that door, if there was ever a use for the word delightful … because I am just delighted. The colors, the smells, the feel of the fabrics, the crazy design of the place. Every bunch of years I will give myself a little shopping spree to get a new blanket or bedspread or rug. Everything in there is the way I wish my house looked.