“What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills ...”

“To make them forget how bad human beings are, they were taught too insistently that bears are good. Instead of being told honestly what humans are and what bears are.”

“Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”

“Not bad, not bad at all," Diotallevi said. "To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.”

“Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported...”

“Thus we have on stage two men, each of whom knows nothing of what he believes the other knows, and to deceive each other reciprocally both speak in allusions, each of the two hoping (in vain) that ...”

“He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.”

“Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Sh...”

“Tell the story as if it were only of interest to the small circle of your characters, of which you may be one. There is no other way to put life into the story.”

“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.”

“It is easier to write a book with footnotes than the same book written so that children can understand it.”

“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”