In Italian museums are sometimes found little painted screens that the priest used to hold in front of the face of condemned men to hide the scaffold from them.

True artists scorn nothing.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

The more I produce, the less I am certain. On the road along which the artist walks, night falls ever more densely. Finally, he dies blind.

Sometimes, from beyond the skycrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

When there is no hope, one must invent hope.