All of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real.

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.

If you walk with the light of the world, you will have the light of life.

The church should be setting the pace. The church should be taking its proper place of leadership in the nation . . .God help the church to wake up!

On many occasions the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly

Trying to make the presidency work these days is like trying to sew buttons on a custard pie.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

The average political poem - especially the kind that wears this label all too proudly - is both dull and full of brow-beating triteness.

If you look at my eyes when I'm dancing, you'll see that glazed look.

My body shape was made to get into the perfect aerodynamic position.

Let others either envy or pity me; I care not, so long as I enjoy myself.

I love singing some Johnny Cash, which is interesting because it's in a guy's key; I love singing Elvis Presley.