I am a professor who writes novels on Sundays

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.

Religion was a means to an end. She had seen it wielded as a weapon. If she needed to use it, she would, but she would never allow herself to be used by it.

The only good thing about being frightened half to death, she thought, is that it makes me forget all about being seasick.

Stars were golden unicorns neighing unheard through blue meadows.

It's compassion that makes gods of us.

We're going to be OK because of the American people. They have more grit, determination and courage than you can imagine.

I don't play any tournaments to come second best.

I have a problem with the blatant celebrity exhibitionism that happens in this business and being sold purely as a brand.

Each one of us is a unique event in the universe.

Love does not exist. There exists the physical need for intercourse, and the rational need for a mate in life

My dad is a very snappy dresser; he gets all his stuff tailored. He's an architect, so he's a little more artistically minded.