I think of a writer as a river: you reflect what passes before you.

Every day silence harvests its victims. Silence is a mortal illness.

You aren't ill: it is just that you are made of second-rate materials

My vocation is to write and I have known this for a long time. I hope I won't be misunderstood; I know nothing about the value of the things I am able to write. I know that writing is my vocation. When I sit down to write I feel extraordinarily at ease, and I move in an element which, it seems to me, I know extraordinarily well; I use tools that are familiar to me and they fit snugly in my hands. But when I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along streets that she has known since she was a child, between walls and trees that are hers.

Over my real sorrows I never weep.

But the English do not know what surprise is. No one ever turns his head to look at anyone else in the street.

Italy is a country which is willing to submit itself to the worst governments. It is, as we know, a country ruled by disorder, cynicism, incompetence and confusion. Nevertheless we are aware of intelligence circulating in the streets like a vivid bloodstream.