Silence sat in the taxi, as though a stranger had got in.

History is not a book, arbitrarily divided into chapters, or a drama chopped into separate acts; it has flowed forward. Rome is a continuity, called 'eternal.' What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone, day and night, like an extra climate.

Spoilt pleasure is a sad, unseemly thing; you can only bury it.

Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own. They stay as they were projected.

... love dreads being isolated, being left to speak in a void -- at the beginning it would often rather listen than speak.

memory is to love what the saucer is to the cup.

very young people are true but not resounding instruments.