The dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.

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

Dogs come into our lives to teach us about love and loyalty. They depart to teach us about loss. A new dog never replaces an old dog; it merely expands the heart. If you have loved many dogs, your heart is very big.

the only people worth writing about are those about whom the last word cannot be said.

Men must be stripped of arrogance and women must become independent for any mutually nurturing alliance to endure between the sexes.

A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.

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.