“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 ...”

“But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are ...”

“You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.”

“A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true source of our actions.”

“When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth ...”

“Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.”

“My life will be the best illustration of all my work.”