Illness is regarded as a crime, and crime is regarded as illness.

There is something worse than dying, and that is humiliation - at least so it seemed to me.

One can be tired of Rome after three weeks and feel one has exhausted it; after three months one feels that one has not even scratched the surface of Rome; and after six months one wishes never to leave it.

Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

Insanity is a lack of proportion.

Collecting is like sex; satisfaction renews and creates new appetites.

Italians do not regard food as merely fuel. They regard it as medicine for the soul, one of life's abiding pleasures.