I had the impression that her place was near mine, but even by bus it took about twenty minutes. She lived alone in an apartment house, square and white like a block of tofu, on the edge of town.

I can't imagine a life without a story.

Love is love. It doesn't matter what kind it is.

I used to think that people are were supposed to be more strange, and dirty, and full of all sorts of emotions, pity and nobility, with infinite layers of complications.

It was the truth. I felt a yearning love for every instant that passed.

Trees, O trees, why can't you hold on to your leaves?

I am angry. It is illegal for me to be angry. Remember: Don't get angry. It is illegal to be a black man and be angry. Right. Got it. I will remember this next time.

What's done to children they will do to society.

Painting is a solitary act for me; I don't need anyone around to make paintings.

The spiritual experience isn’t one of filling ourselves up— with either religious or intellectual beliefs—but of emptying ourselves so that we can experience what is, directly, unfiltered.

My religion forbids me to belittle or disregard other cultures, as it insists, under pain of civil suicide, upon imbibing and living my own.

I'm a federalist. I believe in the Italy of municipalities, of the Renaissance, not in Mussolini's centralization.

One day man will connect his apparatus to the very wheel work of the universe. The very forces that motivate the planets in their orbits and cause them to rotate will rotate his own machinery.

To believe in the God over us and around us and not in the God within us - that would be a powerless and fruitless faith.

You put your hand on Corinne's back like this again and I'm breaking your fingers.