The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause.

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.

The same hot lightning that burns your blood with passion–– cools your fears with peace.

Lewis created a new kind of marriage between theological reflection and poetic imagination.

If the sun comes up, I have a chance.

[Bush Hating] undermines the good faith necessary for democratic discussion. Which is a large part of what people like Al Franken are all about.

No new sect ever had humor; no disciples either, even the disciples of Christ.

It’s never too early or too late to benefit beings.

I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends.

A champion isn’t made of muscle; a champion is made of heart.

We must expect everything and fear everything from time and from men.

Prudence therefore consists in knowing how to distinguish degrees of disadvantage.