To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.

It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.

Each artist or writer who works in Venice comes to believe that the city yields its most special secret to him or her alone.

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.

Loving someone is a loss of freedom - but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.

You reach a point in life where you realize that you might as well do what you need to do, because your being loved or not being loved is really a function of the people you encounter and not of yourself. That is an immensely liberating insight.

The older we get, the more Jewish we become in my family.