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

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.

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.

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

Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material …

Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can’t function without it.

It takes a major unhappiness, a prolonged and bitter experience, to drive us away from loyalties once formed.

When you’re going through a period of unhappiness, a broken love affair, the death of someone you love, or some other disorder in your life, then you have no refuge but writing.

The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for… reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration.

Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

Unhappiness comes from mirrors. Happiness comes from windows.