"Every morning I tell myself, 'Today has to be productive' - and then something happens that prevents me from writing."

"How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan."

"I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hendecasyllables; so after a while, I get bored and my drawer is overflowing with unfinished short poems."

"A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading."

"I was a different kind of kid, oversensitive and all that."

"Tennis and golf are best played, not watched."

"I've supported myself by writing since 1992, and I'm probably very nearly unemployable by now because employers are likely to be put off by the long gap."

"Part of it went on gambling, and part of it went on women. The rest I spent foolishly."