The suspense in a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist himself, who is intensely curious too about what will happen to the hero.

The famous Florentine elegance, which attracts tourists to the shops on Via Tornabuoni and Via della Vigna Nuova, is characterized by austerity of line, simplicity, economy of effect.

The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof

Driving a car, you are in danger of killing; walking or standing, of being killed.

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.

The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.