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.

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

I have a superstition that if I talk about plot, it's like letting sand out of a hole in the bottom of a bag.

Madness might sometimes give access to a kind of knowledge. But was not a guarantee.

For most people it's easier to support an eminent person in deserved disgrace than an obscure one who has been wronged.

A poet or novelist will invent interruptions to avoid long consecutive days at the ordained page; and of these the most pernicious are other kinds of writing -- articles, lectures, reviews, a wide correspondence.

Nothing creates such untruth in you as the wish to please.