“I’m too romantic for my own good. And okay, you get kicked in the butt sometimes. But, frankly, I’d rather have, you know — actual sentiments. Than. You know? You know what I mean?”

“I built and I built— heaven knows I have done that well. Those skyscrapers, full of tenants, floor after floor, and not a single room containing you. You asked why I came here to Rome. I never cared about the news. I came to be in the same room as you, even if I had to build that room, fill it with people, with typewriters, the rest. I only hope you understand that the paper was for you.”

“I got myself into a tangle. I tied myself in knots. I built and I built–heaven knows I have done that well. Those skyscrapers, full of tenants, floor after floor, and not a single room containing you.”

“What's remarkable about fiction is that it places you in the unusual position of having no trajectory. You stand aside, motives abandoned for the duration. The characters have the trajectories now, while you just observe. And this stirs compassion that, in real life, is so often obscured by our own motives.”

“I have to wonder if you're not being slightly naive here. I mean, are you saying that you want nothing for people? You have no motives? Everybody has motives. Name the person, the circumstances, I'll name the motive. Even saints have motives -- to feel like saints, probably. ... But still, the point of any relationship is obtaining something from another person.”

“You know, there's that silly saying 'We're born alone and we die alone' -it's nonsense. We're surrounded at birth and surrounded at death. It is in between that we're alone.”

“You can’t dread what you can’t experience. The only death we experience is that of other people. That’s as bad as it gets. And that’s bad enough, surely.”