“Italians’ relationship to food is loving, informal, and gay.”

To offer the complexities of life as an excuse for not addressing oneself to the simpler, more manageable (trivial) aspects of daily existence is a perversity often indulged in by artists, husbands, intellectuals — and critics of the Women’s Movement.

To surrender one’s vulnerable body to water has always seemed to me a limpid act of will that has no coutnerpart or equal, unless it is sex.

All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

The dream police will not let me have sexual fantasies.

My mother was my first jealous lover.

Weather creates character.

Great unhappiness is incompatible with the belief that it will ever end.

I love medieval cities; they do not clamor for attention; they possess their souls – their riches – in quiet; formal, courteous, they reveal themselves slowly, stone by stone, garden by garden; hidden treasures wait calmly to be loved and yield to introspective wandering.

If there is one lesson Rome teaches, it is that matter is good; in Rome the holy and the homely rise and converge.

Illness is regarded as a crime, and crime is regarded as illness.

Belief sometimes precedes understanding; faith sometimes precedes scientific evidence.

Insanity is a lack of proportion.

The past can be tamed and controlled.

Every generation reinvents the wheel – and in the process it often adds to rather than subtracts from a woman’s burdens.

There are no original ideas. There are only original people.

Italy offers one the most priceless of all one’s possessions – one’s own soul.

There’s a lot of insincerity about the actions of our legislators; they create distractions – like this anti-gay law you alluded to – and try to mobilise, to exacerbate people’s emotions. Until the legislators started making laws, people minded, generally, their own business.

I have no problem whatsoever with allowing gay people to live as they please, as long as they don’t try to impose their lifestyle on everyone else.

While there may have been an age difference, Josh Duggar’s transgressions are far less an affront to God than what gays do with each other.

When asked, ‘Shall I tell my mother I’m gay?’, I reply, ‘Never tell your mother anything.

The flagrantly gay Quentin Crisp dealt with homophobic bullying by refusing to bow to its onslaught. His number listed in the phone directory, he responded to derogatory remarks accompanied with a stated intent to kill him by asking, “Would you like to make an appointment?”

I don’t think you can really be proud of being gay because it isn’t something you’ve done. You can only be proud of not being ashamed.

I think the fact that I’m so well known to be gay makes it very difficult to have a convincing relationship with a woman on screen. It wouldn’t be at all difficult for me to kiss a woman – I’ll kiss a frog if you like.

Gay people are made and not born.