Anybody who's against birth control and abortion has to be a criminal idiot.

Even a tourist can tell in a Roman street that he is in something and not outside of something as he would be in most cities. In Rome to go out is to go home.

Rome is ... an impossible compounding of time, in which no century has respect for any other and all hit you in a jumble at every turn.

The Roman form of serenade is to race a motorcycle motor under the girl's window, but mufflers are not common in any situation; the only things as dearly loved as a good noise are breakneck speed and eye-splitting lights, preferably neon - all expressions of well-being, like a huge belly-laugh.

If you don't love life you can't enjoy an oyster; there is a shock of freshness to it and intimations of the ages of man, some piercing intuition of the sea and all its weeds and breezes. [They] shiver you for a split second.

To be first-rate at anything you have to stake your all. Nobody's an artist 'on the side'.

It is like a party all the time; nobody has to worry about giving one or being invited; it is going on every day in the street and you can go down or be part of it from your window.