Things that are understood are not scandalized. Shock – scandal is basically fear. The scandal is, after all, the fear of losing one’s personality. In short, the shocked person is uncertain, hence a conformist.

It may seem strange, but the idea that Maurizio might also hold his own weapons, or even the same ones, did not occur to me. And yet I should have suspected that Nella and the Party could also be turned against me. But that is how we men are made: we see everything from our own point of view and have great difficulty imagining another perspective.

Fra le mille maniere di fare un’azione, scegliamo sempre istintivamente la peggiore.

You can’t think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don’t think at all.

Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources – and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future.

Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing – I’m a liar, in fact. That means I’m a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.

I don’t think it’s possible to write a good novel around a negative personality.

What was the use of seeing things clearly if the only thing clarity brought was a new and deeper darkness?

When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it’s going to be until I’m under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn’t. But I don’t sit back waiting for it. I work every day.

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one’s heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.