in my experience one thing you don't learn from is anything anyone set up to be a lesson; what you are to know you pick up as you go along.

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.

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

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.

Each piece of dialogue MUST be "something happening". . .The "amusing" for its OWN sake should above all be censored. . .The functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the writer's mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.

To the sun Rome owes its underlying glow, and its air called golden - to me, more the yellow of white wine; like wine it raises agreeability to poetry.