Friendship is a form of love. In fact, you don't know how it starts or why. It is subject to the caprices of time. It can grow or die without a reason. It can last a lifetime.

Aging has brought me greater liberty in fiction. When I was young I was harder on myself. I wrote with an idea of absolute seriousness.

I try to cultivate friendships, because they are great assets. And I tend to make them last over time. Nevertheless sometimes they end mysteriously and you don't really know for what reason. Just like loves.=

A painter's hand has a thirst for thieving, it steals from heaven and makes a gift to the memories of men, it feigns eternity and it delights in this pretence almost as if it had created rules of its own, more durable and more profoundly true.

Since the journey is a metaphor - the most ambiguous and seductive of metaphors, we tell ourselves - it can also be born of immobility. There is no need to drag our bodies around so much, all dressed up. It's hot, there are flies, diseases. It is enough to close our eyes, seated on a chair in the shade, to float on the waves of imagination. Isn't that what books are there for?

I also really loved the sea when I was young, when I lived in Sicily, but unfortunately the sea here has been reduced to a trash dump. It's a horrible pain going to the beach; you risk getting an infection or getting tar all over you.

I consider myself an aware person who is sensitive to injustice.