I have always been fascinated by paranoid people imagining conspiracies. I am fascinated by this in a critical way.

The Art of the Romance, though warning us that it is providing fictions, opens a door into the Palace of Absurdity, and when we have lightly stepped inside, slams it shut behind us.

Monsters exist because they are part of the divine plan, and in the horrible features of those same monsters the power of the creator is revealed.

But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.

In the construction of Immortal Fame you need first of all a cosmic shamelessness.

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing.