Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards; those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and those bastards always talk about the purity of race.

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.

I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.

....I should have wanted you. I wanted so much to want you.

Memories shrink. Like a soap bar used over and over, they become deformed, weaker scented, too slight and slippery to hold.

Love is very real and it's dangerous. People do crazy things in the name of love. Bad things. Love is powerful and shouldn't be played with.

Falling apart wasn't an option.

Most people move actually into high performance in a crisis because that creates the kind of focus that creates high performance.

Prayer, in many ways, is the supreme expression of our faith in God.

It's like thinking you're going to heaven, but when you get there it turns out to be Cleveland.

I dream of a Digital India where the world looks to India for the next Big Idea.

The things which must be must be for the best.