libraries are fascinating places: sometimes you feel you are under the canopy of a railway station, and when you read books about exotic places there's a feeling of travelling to distant lands

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 always do this to people?""Do what?""Get them to empty their guts out just like that.""We do not have much time. We should only talk about what is important.

We live in a nation of pigs and murderers.

I've never formally trained for pain management, but I have a good understanding of how to conquer it. I just analyze the pain, feel it in the moment, and then mentally become numb to it.

He has no idea what it was like to grow up in the South, where you had to hold your head down.

I spent part of my college years in a Marxist commune. I was not a Marxist. I wasn't even pretending to be one. I was a Marxist-in-law.

That is the way of youth and life in general: that we do not understand the strategy until after the campaign is over.

Be prepared,' that's my motto." He smiled smugly at me. "That, and 'Sleep whenever possible.' Oh, and 'If you don't notice it's gone, what's the harm in me taking it?

Rolling down the windows, yeah I got an air conditiona, but I got a sound I want the whole world to listenta.

One finds many companions for food and drink, but in a serious business a man's companions are very few.

The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.