The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoonthat is better than a spoon

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 reject the notion that we must tell girls that the only way to be valid human beings is to turn themselves into boys.

It is plain to me that our prelates, in granting indulgences, do commonly blaspheme the wisdom of God.

A fellow doesn't last long on what he has done. He has to keep on delivering.

It just bothered me that you might think I'm somethin special. I aint.

Show me someone without an ego, and I'll show you a loser.

I'm not claiming I'm a saint, but I have a genuine, genuine belief in trying to help others.

Sometimes consciousness devises an obstacle in order to have the experience of transcending it.

The only thing that lasts longer than a friend's love is the stupidity that keeps us from knowing any better.

In your flaws are hidden your strength. Your perfect imperfection will lead you to change.

If we're on long-haul flights I've been known to sleep on the floor so I hear the engine.