"Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed."

"We obtain things when we no longer want them."

"A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself."

"No woman marries for money: they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him."

"When a woman marries she belongs to another man; and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her."

"Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it—only then—for the first time."

"In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid."

"Love is desire for knowledge."

"There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him."

"The problem is not the harshness of Fate, for anything we want strongly enough we get. The trouble is rather that when we have it we grow sick of it, and then we should never blame Fate, only our own desire."

"When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end."

"Narrating incredible things as though they were real—old system; narrating realities as though they were incredible—the new."

"In fact a man in love or one consumed with hatred creates symbols for himself, as a superstitious man does, from a passion of conferring uniqueness on things or persons. A man who knows nothing of symbols is one of Dante's sluggards. This is why art mirrors itself in primitive rites or strong passions, seeking for symbols, revolving round the primitive taste for savagery, for what is irrational (blood and sex)."

"The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten."

"There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, too look back to when we were children."

"We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it."

"How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night?"

"There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man."

"Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd."

"Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible."

"There is only one pleasure—that of being alive. All the rest is misery."

"We like to have work to do, so as to have the right to rest."

"The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away."

"It is not that things happen to each of us according to his fate, but that he interprets what has happened, if he has power to do so, according to his sense of his own destiny."

"The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess."

"The act—the act—must not be a revenge. It must be a calm, weary renunciation, a closing of accounts, a private, rhythmic deed. The last remark."

"Nothing can be added to the rest, to the past. We always begin afresh. One nail drives out another. But four nails make a cross."

"Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism."

"The thing most feared in secret always happens. I write: oh Thou, have mercy. And then? All it takes is a little courage. The more the pain grows clear and definite, the more the instinct for life asserts itself and the thought of suicide recedes. It seemed easy when I thought of it. Weak women have done it. It takes humility, not pride. All this is sickening. Not words. An act. I won't write any more."

"Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say; it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live."

"Don't mix wine and women, Doro."

"See, you're like all the others. But don't you understand that we can't quarrel? We love each other. If I could hate him the way I hate myself, then of course I would abuse him. But neither of us deserves it. See?"

"If all this were true, how easy it would be to understand people."

"What doesn't slumber under the shells of us all? One just needs courage to uncover it and be oneself. Or at least to discuss it. There isn't enough discussion in the world."

"I've discovered nothing. but do you remember how much we talked when we were boys? We talked just for the fun of it. We knew very well it was only talk, but still we enjoyed it."

"You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young."

"All of them, all those idiots who force their brains and don't know when to stop."

"I started explaining to her that nothing is vulgar in itself but that talking and thinking make it so."

"But all years are stupid. It's only when they're over that they become interesting."

"For a long time we had talked of the hill as we might have talked of the sea or the woods. I used to go back there in the evening from the city when it grew dusk, and for me it was not just another place but a point of view, a way of life. For instance, I saw no difference between those hills and these ancient ones where I played as a child and where I live now: the same broken, straggling country, cultivated and wild, the same roads, farmhouses, and ravines. I used to climb up there in the evening as if I too were fleeing the nightly shock of the air-raid alarms."

"I was happy enough; I knew that during the night the whole city might go up in flames and all its people be killed, but the ravines, houses, and footpaths would wake in the morning calm and unchanged."

"The courage to stand alone as if others didn't exist and think only of what you're doing. Not to get scared if people ignore you. You have to wait for years, have to die. Then after you're dead, if you're lucky, you become somebody."

"It's pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone..."

"That war in which I had been sheltering, convinced of having accepted it, of having made my own uncomfortable peace, grew more ferocious, bit deeper, reached into one's nerves and brain."

"There is something indecent in words."

"Not believing in anything is also a religion."

"Even today I wonder why those Germans didn't wait for me at the villa and send someone to look for me in Turin. It is because of their failure that I am still free and up here. Why I should have been saved and not Gallo, or Tono, or Cate, I don't know. Perhaps because I'm supposed to suffer for others? Because I'm the most useless and don't deserve anything, not even punishment? Because I went into a church that time? The experience of danger creates more cowards every day. It makes one stupid. I have reached the point of being alive only by chance, when many better men than I are dead, I don't like it, it's not enough. At time, after having listened to the useless radio and looked through the windows at the empty vineyards, I think that living by accident is not living, and I wonder if have really escaped."

"But I have seen the unknown dead, those little men of the Republic. It was they who woke me up. If a stranger, an enemy, becomes a thing like that when he dies, if one stops short and is afraid to walk over him, it means that even beaten our enemy is someone, that after having shed his blood, one must placate it, give this blood a voice, justify the man who shed it. Looking at certain dead is humiliating. One has the impression that the same fate that threw these bodies to the ground holds us nailed to the spot to see them, to fill our eyes with the sight. It's not fear, not our usual cowardice. One feels humiliated because one understands–touching it with one's eyes–that we might be in their place ourselves: there would be no difference, and if we live we owe it to this dirtied corpse. That is why every war is a civil war; every fallen man resembles one who remains and calls him to account."

"I don't believe it can end. Now that I've seen what war is, what civil war is, I know that everybody, if one day it should end, ought to ask himself: "And what shall we make of the fallen? Why are they dead?" I wouldn't know what to say. Not now, at any rate. Nor does it seem to me that the others know. Perhaps only dead know, and only for them is the war really over."

"But she didn't laugh. "When you have children," she said, staring at her glass, "you accept life. Do you accept life?""