Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.

When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day.

You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all.

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

Loyalty, Signor Molteni, not love. Penelope is loyal to Ulysses but we do not know how far she loved him...and as you know people can sometimes be absolutely loyal without loving. In certain cases, in fact, loyalty is form of vengeance, of black-mail, of recovering one's self-respect. Loyalty, not love.

I do not foresee a time when I shall feel that I have nothing to say.

Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.