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.

Reflecting on these complex relationships between reader and story, fiction and life, can constitute a form of therapy against the sleep of reason, which generates monsters.

Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through you. Always be kinder than necessary.

In extreme youth in our most humiliating sorrow we think we are alone. When we are older we find that others have suffered too.

To say that my dad pushed me is an understatement. I was never naturally drawn to football.

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life.

I've always had enough, even if my enough and your enough are as different as an elephant and a minaret.

My style has always been very free, easy, relaxed, and slightly androgynous.

The child takes most of his nature of the mother, besides speech, manners, and inclination.

Grace removes obstacles that we don’t even know are there. Grace is what arranges our lives so we are forced to look within.

In the words of Agatha Swanburne, founder of Swanburne Academy, 'Every book is judged by its cover until it is read.'

[To the editor of the Harlan, Kentucky, Daily Enterprise, as a kindergartener:] I know everything that goes on in this town, and if you give me a job so will you.