I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation.

We never love anyone. Not really. We only love our idea of another person. It is some conception of our own that we love. We love ourselves, in fact.

Dignity was the first quality to be abandoned when the heart took over the running of human affairs.

The last thing you know about yourself is your effect.

I don't think they'll ever make a retro Bond.

There are things in life we don't understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone.

I have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.

We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being.

I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.

Film is a medium of clear lines and broad strikes - which can be fantastic - but compared to the subtleties and nuances of a novel, it doesn't even get close.

I let people off the hook too easily.

Happiness is a true wealth, which no money can buy.

To the ego, love is poison.

The bird of paradise alights only on the hand that does not grasp.

The single life is bearable to me only through my work in science, but for the long term, it would be very bad if I had to make do without a very young person next to me.

In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

You take what you've learned, you pass it down, and you keep working.

The future doesn't matter if I don't enjoy what's going on right now.

It is important from time to time to slow down, to go away by yourself, and simply be.

I am a great supporter of [Matteo ] Renzi, he is young, he knows how to communicate, he's our great hope.

The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.