Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.

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 honestly believe that people of my generation despise authenticity, mostly because they're all so envious of it.

All the talking in the world couldn't even prove you and the other person both saw the same color red.

Gold begets in brethren hate Gold in families debate Gold does friendship separate Gold does civil wars create.

The curse of an interesting life: there are either very good times or very bad times.

All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.

You're trying to pin me down. I'm not a verbal person. Look at my work and decide for yourself. It's hard to put it into words.

'La Dolce Vita' made we want to go to Rome and, if not jump into the Trevi Fountain, at least watch someone else do it. Maybe that's why I married an Italian...!

Social welfare is the most corrosive behavioral force ever unleashed by man.

My father taught me that you have to stand by your principles.

If the world knew what I was doing, they would hang me from the highest tree.