All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.

And I don't want to live anywhere where I am famous. It makes me very, very uncomfortable, because it conveys an advantage over people, and I don't like that.

Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will

And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.

I love music. But I've never owned a TV in my adult life, and I've never lived in a place with a television.

I have always had a particular antagonism for the military.

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.