The Art of the Romance, though warning us that it is providing fictions, opens a door into the Palace of Absurdity, and when we have lightly stepped inside, slams it shut behind us.

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.

Take care of the sense and the sounds will take of care themselves.

People think, 'She's a model. She must have such an attitude. She must be so stuck up.' But I'm normal. I cry. I'm not rich. I drive a 1987 Chevrolet Celebrity.

I've never cared for guns. In fact, when I did 'Scent of a Woman' I had to learn how to assemble one.

when we leave society and come into the presence of Nature, we become children again; and the fictions of thought and action assumed among men drop off like a garment.

Within any drama in anyone's life, there's always a way to find the humor in it. Without humor no one cares about whatever drama is going on.

Illumination in the outer world is to be happy no matter what is going on. In the inner world, it's more ineffable. It's harder to express.

Karma is the sum total of who you are, everything you've been. The mind state you are in is karmic. Meaning, it's related by a causal chain of existences, of moments, of particles of timelessness.

The meaning of your life comes through your obligations to others.

For me, university was just awful because it was closing one door after the other of all these candy shops of professional possibilities.

Art is making something better without knowing what better is until you make it.