We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.

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.

Each one of us has hated his or her parents at some point in early life … how quickly we turn around our feelings determines our extent of success.

Henry closed his eyes and imagined the sweet petulant woundedness with which she had stared at him on the beach. He felt a little proud that she could love him.

The term 'natural resources' confuses people. 'Natural resources' are not like a finite number of gifts under the Christmas tree. Nature is given, but resources are created.

You can't pay enough money to... cure that feeling of being broken and confused.

And like lambs to a slaughter we shall follow.

Hot air balloons are terrific to shoot from, although they have become very expensive, as has most lodging and food in the Napa Valley.

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.

I never learned to count my blessings I choose instead to dwell in my disasters

Man with frailty is allied by birth.

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.