The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name.

The only thing he could do to stay alive was not to allow himself the anguish of that memory. He erased it from his mind, although from time to time in the years that were left to him he would feel it revive, with no warning and for no reason, like the sudden pang of an old scar.

The problem in public life is learning to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

Nevertheless, no matter how much they killed themselves with work, no matter how much money they eked out, and no matter how many schemes they thought of, their guardian angels were asleep with fatigue while they put in coins and took them out trying to get just enough to live with.

What Uncle Leo XIII never suspected was that his nephew's courage did not come from the need to survive or from a brute indifference inherited from his father, but from a driving need for love, which no obstacle in this world or the next would ever break.

I'll never fall in love again... it's like having two souls at the same time.