“The trouble with eating Italian is that 5 or 6 days later, you're hungry again.”

“1) Work on one thing at a time until finished.2) Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring."3) Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.4) Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!5) When you can't create you can work.6) Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.7) Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.8) Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.9) Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.10) Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.11) Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.”

“Most of our failures in understanding one another have less to do with what is heard than with what is intended and what is inferred.”

“If you seek revenge, it means you're scared or you feel guilty for what happened in some way. It's okay to be angry with someone, but don't think about revenge. It's like a disease that eats you up.”

“The night has a thousand eyes and I'm a gypsy dancer still hungry for more.”

“The city grows like a cancer; I must grow like a sun. The city eats deeper and deeper into the red; it is an insatiable white louse which must die eventually of inanition. I am going to starve the white louse which is eating me up. I am going to die as a city in order to become again a man. Therefore I close my ears, my eyes, my mouth.”

“Life was complicated enough without borrowing trouble.”