We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.

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.

You don't have to be religious to hear God, you just have to be willing, and there's a big difference between the two.

The interviewer should just tell me the words he wants me to say and I’ll repeat them after him. I think that would be so great because I’m so empty I just can’t think of anything to say.

If your dream only includes you, it's too small.

The highest achievers in the world have all succeeded because they mapped out their visions

I have the happiness of a passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?

Solve the problem of life? Live, and you solve it.

My father always used to say, "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," - 'til the accident.

The Democratic Party needs to look carefully at moving towards the middle, where the American people are.

Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.

No other person ever has, or ever will have, the unique blend of talents, strengths, and perspective that you have.