For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit - "le suggérer, voilà le rêve!").

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.

I will go to campus alone dressed in antique silk slips and beat-up cowboy boots and gypsy beads, and I will study poetry. I will sit on the edge of the fountain in the plaza and write.

Stars shine even for those who refuse to look up.

I went to the UN and even the guidebook was spineless.

Climate change is new and complex. We don't have all the answers.

My favourite painting is often the one or the collection that I am currently working on. This is probably due to the fact that I don't yet know where it will take me.

You know, I've learned that sometimes you can only see what you want to see by changing where you stand. And standing somewhere unexpected can lead to unexpected discoveries.

Staying present and staying myself in the midst of others is important.

The bride and groom-May their joys be as bright as the morning, and their sorrows but shadows that fade in the sunlight of love.

Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.

On parochial school I was told I had an overabundance of original sin.