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A writer never forgets the first time he accepts some coins or a praise in exchange for a story. He never forgets the first time he feels in his blood the sweet venom of vanity and believes that, if he shall be able to hide to all his lack of talent, the dream of literature may give him a roof above his head, warm food at the end of the day and above all everything he had ever desired for: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that will surely live more than he ever shall. A writer is for ever condemned to remember that moment, because by then he is already lost and his soul already has a price.

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She possessed a strange charm that seduced in a slow but relentless way.

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The most important meetings have already been combined by souls before the bodies are even created. Usually, they happen when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. Meetings await us, but most of the time we avoid them happening. If we're desperate, instead, if we have nothing left to lose or we're quite enthusiastic about life, then the unknown occurs and our universe changes tack. (from "11 minutes")

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My world... This great absurd being. One couldn't even wonder where it came from, all this, nor why a wold existed rather than nothing. It didn't have any sense, the world was present everywhere, in front, behind. There was nothing before that. Nothing. There wasn't a moment in which it couldn't have not existed. It was exactly this which irritated me: without a doubt there was no reason for it to exist, this crawling larvae. But it wasn't possible for it not to exist. It was unthinkable: to imagine nothingness one needed to be there already, in a full world, as a living soul, with wide eyes, nothingness was but an idea in my head, an existing idea, fluctuating within that immensity: that nothingness didn't come before existence, it was an existence like many others and appeared after many others.

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When I like someone a lot I never say their name to anyone: it would be like giving part of them away. I've learnt to love the secret: it seems to me like the only thing that can make misterious - or marvellous - modern life.

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The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

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I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will!

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No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

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It happens to everyone, especially to the young, to think of having the world by the neck, and sometimes it's true. But at the same moment that someone is convinced everything is going for the best, there are some statistical laws that work at their backs ready to rip them off.

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One of the many traps of childhood is that it is not necessary to understand to suffer.