This is a fallen world. People lie, the truth gets distorted, and that's the way it is. What's for dinner ?
I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.
I do not take any pleasure whatsoever in being a famous person.
The ending is one of my blackest, utterly without hope of any sort.
Venetians feel affection and loyalty to their city, rather than to the Italian state.
Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it.