A novelist is a man who doesn't like his mother.

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.

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

I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words.

The Foundation of Freedom is Unity

They say nerves heal real slowly. Lots of things about us heal real slowly.

What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.

Why would any woman agree to be on a show called Bridezillas? It's not like men would agree to be on Douchegroom.

How many men are there who fairly earn a million dollars?

Nobody is such an individualist as the man who advocates equality.

Once a year my back will go out and it'll be... it's like a sciatic thing and it's the smallest thing. Like I could be leaning over the sink to brush my teeth in a weird way and it happens.

I don't think you necessarily have to be part of a traditional nuclear family to be a good mother.

Scholasticism, a concept which does not bear criticism, is a theological concept specifically designed to sustain faith in the immortality of the soul.

I was nostalgic even as a young man. Preferred listening to Opera not Bing Crossby.