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

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

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.

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.

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.

Watch your back, little wolf, they say. Enemies arise from unexpected places.

We did not underestimate what we could do.

Exactly you had to dress in flannel, and if you were a grunge band, before the grunge thing took off and you said you were METAL.

The best thing about having four big brothers is you always have someone to do something for you.

Listen to your bodies. You are constantly receiving information from your body about how to care for it and yourself.

If I lose, I'll walk away and never feel bad because I did all I could. There was nothing more to do.

What you do every day matters more than what you do every once in a while. Read The Power of Habit.

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's a day you've had everything to do and you've done it.

When I came into the league, once a team drafted you, they owned you forever. If they didn't like the clothes you wore, or the car you drove, they could blackball you.

The best way to deal with the deficit is through economic growth.