Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

The Lives of Great Men are more oft' at variance with their profess'd Phillosophies than consistent with 'em.

I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world.

What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.

The desire for magic cannot be eradicated. Even the most supposedly rational people attempt to practice magic in love and war. We simultaneously possess the most primitive of brain stems and the most sophisticated of cortices. The imperatives of each coexist uneasily.

But come back in November or December, in February or March, when the fog, la nebbia, settles upon the city like a marvelous monster, and you will have little trouble believing that things can appear and disappear in this labyrinthine city, or that time here could easily slip in its sprockets and take you, willingly or unwillingly, back.

I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.