I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

Palermo was lovely. The most beautifully situated town in the world - it dreams away its life in the Conca d'Oro, the exquisite valley that lies between two seas. The lemon groves and the orange gardens were entirely perfect.

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman

After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets.