The language of the younger generation has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.

The future may be an enemy. Time can turn happy days and nights into nothing.

Flattery is a challenge. The proper turning away from it, undercutting, diminishing it without offense or vehemence, is a social grace sweeter even than the swift determination to keep ahead in the race of hospitality.

Here in the city the worst thing that can happen to a nation has happened: we are a people afraid of its youth.

Now, my novel begins. No, now I begin my novel—and yet I cannot decide whether to call myself I or she.

Biology is destiny only for girls.

[On sociability in Italy:] You may be a hermit or an innkeeper.