"War makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those values."

"When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves."

"It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her."

"It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it."

"You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering."

"Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality."

"Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man."

"We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites."

"The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows."

"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."

"The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else's."

"Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose."

"Since God could have created a freedom in which there could be no evil (i.e., a state when men were happy and free and certain not to sin), it follows that He wished evil to exist. But evil offends Him. A commonplace case of masochism."

"All our "most sacred affections" are merely prosaic habit."

"To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it."

"No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide."

"We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God."

"When one has made a mistake, one says. "Another time I shall know what to do," when one should say is: "I already know what I shall really do another time.""

"Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?"

"A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience."

"La difficoltà di commettere suicidio sta in questo: è un atto di ambizione che si può commettere solo quando si sia superata ogni ambizione."

"Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it."

"This much is certain: you can have anything in life except a wife to call you "her man." And till now all your life was based on that hope."

"Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman."

"Men who have a tempestuous inner life and do not seek to give vent to it by talking or writing are simply men who have no tempestuous inner life. Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone."

"The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies."

"The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment. When this sensation is lacking—as when one is in prison, or ill, or stupid, or when living has become a habit—one might as well be dead."

"But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever."

"If it is true that one gets used to suffering, how is it that as the years go one always suffers more? No, they are not mad, those people who amuse themselves, enjoy life, travel, make love, fight—they are not mad. We should like to do the same ourselves."

"Every woman longs for a man friend to confide in, to fill the empty hours when the one she loves is away; she insists that this friend does not affect her love for the absent one; she takes offense if he makes any demand that might interfere with her love; but if that friend grows cautious and keeps his words and glances under control, with the sole object of saving himself further suffering, then the woman — any woman — immediately does her best to increase her hold upon him so that she can watch him suffer. And she does not even realize she is doing it. Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared. It is amazing that the woman you love may tell you her days are empty and unbearable, but yet she has no wish to know what yours are like.* // 17th November 1937."

"Consider this point carefully: nowadays, suicide is just a way of disappearing. It is carried out timidly, quietly, and falls flat. It is no longer an action, only a submission."

"When a man mourns for someone who has played him false, it is not for love of her, but for his own humiliation at not having deserved her trust."

"A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself."

"Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared."

"I realised that Nuto was quite right when he said that to live in a hovel or in a palace was one and the same thing, that blood is the same colour everywhere, and that everybody wants to be rich and in love and make their fortune."

"Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast."

"What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it."

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

"What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence."

"It had to happen to you, to concentrate your whole life on one point, and then discover that you can do anything except live at that point."

"All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority, otherwise called ambition."

"Nuto, who had never really gone away, still wanted to understand the world and change it, and upset the cycle of the seasons. Or perhaps he didn't, and still believed only in the moon. But I, who didn't believe in the moon, knew that when all was said and done only the seasons matter and they are in your bones and they nurtured you when you were a boy."

"The whole plain was like a battlefield—or a farmyard. There was a reddish light and I jumped down, cramped and stiff with cold; a sliver of moon was piercing the low clouds and it looked like a gash from a knife and bathed the plain in a blood-red light. I stayed looking at it for a while. It terrified me."

"What use is this valley to a family that comes from across the sea and knows nothing about the moon and the bonfires? You must have grown up there and have in in your bones, like wine and polenta, and then you know it without needing to speak about it and everything you have carried about inside you for so many years without knowing awakens now at the rattle of the chain on a cart, at the swish of an ox' tail, at the taste of a bowl of minestra, at the sound of a voice heard in the square at night."

"Even then he had those piercing cat's eyes of his and when he had said something, finished up by saying: "If I'm wrong, put me right." And so I began to understand that you didn't speak for the sake of speaking, to say that you had done this or that, what you had eaten or drunk, but to work out an idea, to find out what makes the world go round."

"That you need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. Your own village means that you're not alone, that you know there's something of you in the people and the plants and the soil, that even when you are not there it waits to welcome you."

"It wasn't a country where a man could settle down and rest his head and say to the others, "Here I am for good or ill. For good or ill let me leave in peace." This was what was frightening."

"He told me that it isn't what you do but how you do it that shows whether you are clever or not."