My confidence in the future of literature consists in the knowledge that there are things that only literature can give us, by means specific to it.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people.

I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.

The universe is the mirror in which we can contemplate only what we have learned to know in ourselves

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.

Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?

I will start out this evening with an assertion: fantasy is a place where it rains.

Flannel shirts should be outlawed for ex husbands

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95)

Forgiveness is the highest and most difficult of all moral lessons.

I believe there was a big bang and that because of that we are all connected into infinity, and I know very little having to do with human beings that doesn't also have to do with connection.

The work in Iraq is difficult and it is dangerous. Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed. Every picture is horrifying, and the suffering is real.

I understand how important the automakers are to America. And I understand a bankruptcy; a failure in that industry wouldn't be a good thing. It's something we should avoid.

I am the beneficiary of a lucky break in the genetic sweepstakes.

Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilised world

And I never missed one concert. In 89 shows, I think I did one a bit suspect show. In the old days, I'd pull gigs left, right and center because I was too f - - up.

Healing doesn't mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls your life.