“Sometimes I think that just not thinking of oneself is a form of prayer. . .”

Autobiography is a preemptive strike against biographers.

One can be tired of Rome after three weeks and feel one has exhausted it; after three months one feels that one has not even scratched the surface of Rome; and after six months one wishes never to leave it.

To live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work, fun of the most exhausting sort

In the face of evil, detachment is a dubious virtue.

Italians do not regard food as merely fuel. They regard it as medicine for the soul, one of life’s abiding pleasures.

There are no inanimate objects.

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.

Sometimes the mistake I see people make is thinking that they’re always going to be up, and I think that’s impossible for anyone.

Often my creative life has seemed like a long tunnel, dark and damp. And sometimes I wondered whether I could live through it. But I did!

People say love can be developed, but in the end, the only person you love is yourself. That’s why you choose to love someone who can please you the most.

Sometimes we misjudge what is possible and what is not.

They should be unchanging in shape and proportions. But sometimes they do change depending on who’s in them.

How do I think of you? As someone I want to be with. As someone as young as me, but “older,” if that makes sense. As someone I like to look at, not just because you’re good to look at, but because just looking at you makes me smile and feel happier.

He thought: How difficult it is to explain yourself to yourself. Sometimes there only is, and no knowing.

Even now, sometimes on street corners… when I meet someone, I see your shadow.