Some Italians are geniuses, but you have to find a balance.

When I look fast, I'm not smooth and I am going slowly. And when I look slow, I am smooth and going fast.

Do you know, why I really love my helmet that much? Because it makes me 15 centimetres taller!

Without going to what I think is my limit. I always say that my ideal is to get pole with the minimum effort, and to win the race at the slowest speed possible.

I always work the same way, starting from the beginning of the weekend, so I know at the beginning of the race, from all that I have analysed during the practice, whether I will win the race or not.

Sometimes I think I could have got some better results if I had a different mentality; if I could have pushed hard and attacked. But then I would have had a good chance of making a mistake.

Does it scare me, driving into nothing at 300kph? - Of course it does - I'm not an idiot.

I have no problem with the people who work hard to get success. But I think people are very jealous about success. I work very hard and they don't appreciate that.

The people who criticise you will not be the ones taking care of your legs when you are in your wheelchair. People who never drove a car in these conditions, they just don't know.

When you win a race like this the feeling is very, very good.

In 1980 I finished three or four times in seventh place.

I love you, Louise Downe McCord. You drive me absolutely crazy sometimes, and this is one of those times, but I love you.

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything, than when we are at play.

Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?

Anyone with an autobiography is almost definitely an evil piece of shit.

Bow and offer your meditation to Eternity, as you would offer a Flower to your lover.

You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.

You love to listen to the very same things that nailed your supposed Savior to the tree?

Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?

Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.