“The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”

The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.

Everything can be found at sea according to the spirit of your quest.

God is for men, and religion for women.

There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.

Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.

The ethical view of the universe involves us in so many cruel and absurd contradictions that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all.

All roads are long which lead to one’s heart’s desire.

Everything belonged to him–but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel–it is, before all, to make you see.

It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.

What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.

In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.

It’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

I do believe people ought to be left alone. I don’t care who you are or what you do at home or who your friends are or where you hang out, what kind of music you listen to, what you do in your home is your own business. That’s always been who I am. I am a leave me alone kind of guy.

In Positano, I like the San Pietro Hotel, which is run by a friend whose family has owned the hotel for more than 100 years.

I had a friend who worked at a hospice, and he said people in their final moments don’t discuss their successes, awards or what books they wrote or what they accomplished. They only talk about their loves and their regrets, and I think that’s very telling.

He who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.

I remember I was there for you bitches, when nobody cared for you bitches.

You dont know someone until you know what they want.

Drink wine. This is life eternal. This is all that youth will give you. It is the season for wine, roses and drunken friends. Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.

The only friends who are free from cares are the goblet of wine and a book. Give me wine…that I may for a time forget the cares of the world.