No man is a man until he has been a soldier.

It's stupid to claim that one human being is special, or picked out by God, when in fact there are hundreds of millions of human beings in the world, and God knows how many millions of people long dead who have been lost to history, all of whom were probably special to someone.

I know you have not thought about it. Italians always act without thinking, it's the glory and the downfall of your civilisation. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish...well, God knows. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point.

People taking photographs of their meals are not critics; they are from the United States.

Beauty is precious, you see, and the more beautiful something is, the more precious it is; and the more precious it is the more it hurts us that it will fade away; and the more we are hurt by beauty, the more we love the world.

Your lips are like sugar And your cheeks an apple Your breasts are paradise And your body a lily. O, to kiss the sugar To bite the apple To reveal paradise And open the lily.

Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.