Italians are never punctual; the café, the convenient place to wait, absolves them from that. There is no question of hanging about, no looking lost and unwanted or even disreputable, as there is in hotel lobbies or the foyers of restaurants. One just sits and enjoys the scene, and waits.

I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing.

... one doesn't really profit from experience; one merely learns to predict the next mistake.

What you fear most will happen to you - that is the law.

At first, there is something you expect of life. Later, there is what life expects of you. By the time you realize these are the same, it can be too late for expectations. What we are being, not what we are to be. They are the same thing.

Marriage is like democracy - it doesn't really work, but it's all we've been able to come up with.

That was the trouble with experience; it taught you that most people were capable of anything, so that loyalty was never quite on firm ground -- or, rather, became a matter of pardoning offenses instead of denying their existence.