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 am against censorship. I prefer the chaos of uncontrollable communication of all sorts to selective banning of certain materials. I do not think human beings can be trusted to be above politics and to promote the common good. One group's common good is another group's evil.

Isn't it our job to be appalled by our parents? Isn't it every generation's duty to be dismayed by the previous generation? And to assert that we are different - only to discover later that we are distressingly the same?

Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

fame is merely the fact of being misunderstood by millions of people.

We find our calling or it finds us, and it's a sin against the fates not to use your talent when you have it.

The aim of my writing is to utterly remove the distance between author and reader so that the book becomes a sort of semipermeable membrane through which feelings, ideas, nutrients pass.