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Quotes by Italian Authors
"Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need."
"In our own time it has been seen... that simple children, roughly brought up in the wilderness, have begun to draw by themselves, impelled by their own natural genius, instructed solely by the example of these beautiful paintings and sculptures of Nature."
"The world is a living image of God."
"The smallest feline is a masterpiece."
"Seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."
"But why, everybody asks, am I not blessed by fortune (or at least not as blessed as I would like to be)? Why have I not been favored like others who are less deserving? No one believes their misfortunes are attributable to any shortcomings of their own; that is why they must find a culprit."
"It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the night and gradually reacquire colors, but seem to cross meanwhile an uncertain limbo, faintly touched, just breathed on by light; the hour in which one is least certain of the world's existence."
"Today each of you is the object of the other's reading, one reads in the other the unwritten story."
"I'm accustomed to thinking of literature as a search for knowledge; in order to move onto existential terrain I need to consider it in relation to anthropology, ethnology, and mythology."
"Books that distribute things... with as daring a freedom as we use in dreams, put us on our feet again."
"The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things."
"The relation between practical and spiritual spheres in music is obvious, if only because it demands ears, finger, consciousness and intellect."
"Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth."
"The print does not always have the same shape as the body that impressed it, and it doesn't always derive from the pressure of a body. At times it reproduces the impression a body has left in our mind: it is the print of an idea."
"Again I am torn between the necessity and the impossibility of answering."
"When you're young, all evolution lies before you, every road is open to you, and at the same time you can enjoy the fact of being there on the rock, flat mollusk-pulp, damp and happy."
"Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?"
"If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight."
"With the smell of beer I try to get the smell of death off me. And only the smell of death will get the smell of beer off you, like all the drinkers whose graves I have to dig."
"The devil is not the prince of matter; the devil is the arrogance of spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns from whence he came."
"Realize that everything connects to everything else."
"A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people. If this is not the case, then humanity becomes - as it is already to a large extent - no more than a rabbit-warren. But this is no longer a 'free-range warren but a 'battery one, in the conditions of artificiality in which it lives, with artificial light and chemical feed."
"The world was trying to change its old face and show its underbelly of earth and roots."
"He was staring hard, not at his wife and me but at his daughter watching us. In his cold pupil, in the firm twist of his lips, was reflected Madame Miyagi's orgasm reflected in her daughter's gaze."
"The universe will express itself as long as somebody will be able to say, 'I read, therefore it writes."
"Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death."
"The beauty of the universe consists not only of unity in variety, but also of variety in unity."
"You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself."
"Acting is not that far from mental disease: An actor works on splitting his character into others. It is like a kind of schizophrenia."
"I was little impressed with this rough and ready way of persuading people to renew their contracts and decided that I was now quite free of any obligations."
"It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own."
"The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text."
"He who thinks little errs much."
"The taxi driver is someone who spends all day driving in city traffic (an activity that provokes either heart attack or delirium), in constant conflict with other human drivers. Consequently, he is nervous and hates every anthropomorphic creature."
"You will also allow me to thank the Academy for inviting me to lecture in Stockholm, for its hospitality, and for the opportunity afforded me for admiring the charm of your people and the beauty of your country."
"In the years when I discovered the Abbé Vallet volume, there was a widespread conviction that one should write only out of a commitment to the present, in order to change the world. Now, after ten years or more, the man of letters (restored to his loftiest dignity) can happily write out of pure love of writing."
"The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is."
"Without forgiveness life is governed by... an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation."
"A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion."
"Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away."
"To describe and explain my ideas is to lose them."
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