There are things that can't be said, because it's hard to have to know them.

I want to be bored. But I can't. But I really don't want to be this thing that I'm having to be instead of being bored.

I was at the tail end of the family. The next brother along was already seven years older than me. I remember growing up by myself, playing games by myself.

Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.

A good argument, like a good dialogue, is always a proof of life, but I'd much rather go and read a book.

As for Aliki - if you were to stand in the middle of Rome and say the name Sophia Loren, or Paris and say the name Catherine Deneuve or Brigitte Bardot, or L.A. and the name Marilyn Monroe, it's like standing in Athens, or anywhere in wide-flung Greece, and saying Aliki Vougiouklaki. A huge star - and so little known elsewhere in the world.

Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.