Because the world to-day is so constructed that no one can do what he would like to do, and he is forced, instead, to do what others wish him to do. Because the question of money always intrudes—into what we do, into what we are, into what we wish to become, into our work, into our highest aspirations, even into our relations with the people we love!

When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.

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

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.

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.

Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.

In life there are no problems, that is, objective and external choices; there is only the life which we do not resolve as a problem but which we live as an experience, whatever the final result may be.