After years of practice, I can walk into a bookstore and understand its layout in a few seconds. I can glance at the spine of a book and make a good guess at its content from a number of signs.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.

If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.

There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

To survive, you must tell stories.

But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

It is not where we are that matters nor what we have, it is what we do with where we are and what we have.

In soul of every newborn baby, words are waiting to be written.

So never be embarrassed by mistakes, rather, be thankful for them, because they always present an opportunity for personal growth.

One bright sunny day at a successful Literary Agency…Literary Agent: “So, Tina – we asked you to try and write a children’s story…”Tina: “Uh-huh.

I wrote this about you, about our love, our story. And I feel so damn lucky that others in this world, strangers in other parts, can steal a piece of what we have and feel so lucky too.

Liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and his works.

...perhaps charity is the kind of beauty that we comprehend the best because we miss it the most.

Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.

I live in an atmosphere of music.

When I'm singing I try not be a singer with a capital S. I just try to get it out so I feel comfortable with it.