I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.

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 think sometimes the stars align whether we want them to or not. And we're drawn to certain people and places for no other reason than...Destiny.

The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history.

I would be willing, yes glad, to see a battle every day during my life

I thought about making biscuits, but there seemed to be more than enough calories on board.

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one... just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

I think that the worst unpleasantness of age is not its final fact ... but the tediousness of preparation, the accumulating number of defeats.

Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs.

I love looking completely different and that my fans won't always know what I'm going to do.

Producers like to record all the drums first, then they do the bass, then all the guitars, so you're constantly moving from one song to another.

Parents sometimes forget that after the child emerges from the utter physical and mental helplessness of infancy, it is becoming more and more an individual.