I have learned that a man has the right and obligation to look down at another man, only when that man needs help to get up from the ground.
The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.
He said that love was an emotion contra natura that condemned two strangers to a base and unhealthy dependence, and the more intense it was, the more ephemeral.
I have never done anything except write, but I don’t possess the vocation or talents of a narrator, have no knowledge at all of the laws of dramatic composition, and if I have embarked upon this enterprise it is because I trust in the light shed by how much I have read in my life.
I do not believe there is a method better than Montessori for making children sensitive to the beauties of the world and awakening their curiosity regarding the secrets of life.
The truth is that the first changes are so slow they pass almost unnoticed, and you go on seeing yourself as you always were, from the inside, but others observe you from the outside.
The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.
I don’t know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it’s true. We aren’t satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams.
I would give wings to children, but I would leave it to them to learn how to fly by themselves.
I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.
As a writer I’m merely a journalist who has learned to write better than others.
Music is important for one’s health.
The truth is that I know very few novelists who have been satisfied with the adaptation of their books for the screen.
She was a ghost in a strange house that overnight had become immense and solitary and through which she wandered without purpose, asking herself in anguish which one of them was deader: the man who had died or the woman he had left behind.
I can’t think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.
If God hadn’t rested on Sunday, He would have had time to finish the world.
An early-rising man is a good spouse but a bad husband.
There is bound to be someone driven mad by love who will give you the chance to study the effects of gold cyanide on a cadaver. And when you do find one, observe with care, they almost always have crystals in their heart.
It’s much more important to write than to be written about.
When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me, I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end.