The only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.

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'm not at all the sort of woman who kisses strange dragons when she comes across them.

Sufism is experience, and hence not to be defined – imprisoned – in perennial, static categories.

You’re playing with a blow torch, andit’s pointed at your head. Think about what you’re saying.

I think it was hard at first for my dad to transition to being immobile.

Some of the shells brought my heart into my mouth; lying there waiting for them was intolerable. I was sure I was going to be blown to pieces.

There's a sketch at every turn.

Eternal life is not primarily duration but quality of life, "life to the limit.

People go to the zoo and they like the lion because it's scary. And the bear because it's intense, but the monkey makes people laugh.

To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.

Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.