My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.

There's never any great risk as long as you have money.

There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.

The hungry and the homeless don't care about liberty any more than they care about cultural heritage. To pretend that they do care is cant.

Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.

He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.

I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.