I know," she said. "You have a stone in your heart, and some days it's so heavy there is nothing to be done. But you don't have to be alone for it. You should have come to me. I understand.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

That which does not kill me makes me stronger.

I've been busy for a long, long time. I've received a ton of awards in the past few years ... I think they're really great, it's really an honor, but s**t - I really have to work for these things.

The existential split in man would be unbearable could he not establish a sense of unity within himself and with the natural and human world outside.

Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates.

Modern science has as its object as little pain as possible, as long a life as possible - hence a sort of eternal blessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promises of religion.

That which one fears, one typically won't embrace with open arms.

We can only reach our goal amid bloodletting

You can't cross a sea by merely staring into the water.

The left, if you get them honest, will admit they know they're a minority.

In Italy there is a supreme know-how and a desire to achieve that doesn't really exist anywhere else. You can't make clothes like that in America, because it's just not in the tradition.