We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.

The lake and the mountains have become my landscape, my real world.

I am at home everywhere, and nowhere. I am never a stranger and I never quite belong.

I saw Mussolini tirelessly contemplate a parade of thousands of young men.

If each one of us could make just one other happy, the whole world would know happiness.

I'm a bit like a sponge. When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little - and out comes, not water but ink.

If your vision of the world is of a certain kind you will put poetry in everything, necessarily.

For 30 years I have tried to make it understood that there are no criminals.

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words.

I write fast, because I have not the brains to write slow.

In storms look for rainbows

You, Dad, in the large scheme of things, don't matter. I, Dad, don't matter. We're vectors on the grids of cellular life.

I have a big personality, and I think big personality plus blond hair makes me come across as glib. With dark hair, people look at your face more. Before, it was all about the hair.

Those who have happy homes seldom turn out badly.

There are a few things that you can do that will yield better results than doing a whole lot of other things.

Measure not by the scale of perfection the meager product of reality.

In the circumstances in which the Republic finds itself, the constitution cannot be inaugurated; it would destroy itself. The provisional government of France is revolutionary until there is peace.

Good to forgive, Best to forget.

No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.

My older sister is a working mom. She's busy. She chooses to spend money on her children. But she should be able to afford a good shoe for herself.