You cannot escape one infinite, I told myself, by fleeing to another. You cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple.

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.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

That was how people got through life, he supposed: by acknowledging death and telling it, “Not today.

You can tell a lot about a society by what it fears.

I dropped out of school for a semester, transferred to another college, switched to an art major, graduated, got married, and for a while worked as a graphic designer.

I busted my chin open trying to be Evel Knievel on my bike. When it happened, you could see straight through to the bone, I thought my dad was going to pass out. It left a scar that I still have now.

It's only interesting when you're from somewhere else, like America or Japan. The further away the more interesting it is.

That we are surrounded by deep mysteries is known to all but the incurably ignorant.

My family has had to move and change their name and have been subject to threats from right wing blogs calling for my son, for example, to be killed to get at me.

Took a vow to protect and serve, All you do is disrespect and murder. I ask that you not hurt my kids; This is where you work...this is where I live.

Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own.