Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: You have to learn the rhythms of respiration - acquire the pace. Otherwise you stop right away.

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 takes courage, motivation, discipline, and persistence to get out of comfort zone.

The only differences between a cult and a religion are the numbers of adherents and the degree to which they are marginalized by the rest of society.

What you call mistakes and failures are valuable experiences.

So lonely 'twas that God himself scarce seemed there to be.

The German Reich is a Republic, and whoever doesn't believe it gets one in the neck.

Those who criticize our generation forget who raised it.

Invention is the mother of necessities.

I know people who believe in ghosts but don’t believe in themselves. It’s kind of sad. Okay you don’t think you’ll ever make it as a musician, but last night you saw a translucent caveman.

Doing the difficult things that you've never done awakens the talents you never knew you had.

I'm not a peak oil person. I'm not a biohazard apocalyptic kind of freak. I don't have a supply of weapons or gold bars under my house.