Natalia Ginzburg

No adultery is bloodless.

When I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along streets that she has known since she was a child, between walls and trees that are hers.

You aren't ill: it is just that you are made of second-rate materials.

The minute you think you've got it made, disaster is just around the corner.

I've always had real trouble knowing what my actual desires and goals are. I've just been dragged along by fate.

The fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction. All nations and all empires first felt decadence gnawing at them when their birth rate fell off.