“Shut up, shut up, will you! Nobody minds that you are in pain. Pain is a human condition. You do not care that I am hungry, do you? And therefore I do not need to care whether you are in agony. Nob...”

“All the friends in the world are in the fountain of a pen.”

“A demigod who reaches his apotheosis never mourns for himself.It is the business of his many adulators to mourn for him. He cannot feel sadness to be so great, leaving all the rest of us to champio...”

“Attracting musicians is rather like inviting flies over to tea: they are tolerable for half an hour, but when they begin to touch the food, you either wish they would go home or die.”

“Life is really a travesty of will: it is a parade of learning how to lose people and improve at feigning indifference.I suspect I shall always fail at this, and fail miserably. I do not know whethe...”

“Life makes beggars out of those who have joyful hearts, taxing the living with hardship and tribulation, but the charity of companionship, the currency of shared and unmitigated love, alleviates al...”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“A heart? Peppone knows where one is to be met with. There is always someone in the black market in need of dying early.”