Dino Buzzati

“For a long time he had been thinking that in the end he would have to leave, that it was ridiculous to wait any longer.”

“And so Giovanni Drogo, who had left home one morning in September, found himself involved in this same way of life, from which he had not been able to escape.”

“It's a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.”

“Hope, in fact, is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.”

“What is this thing that has us in its grip, this thing that will not let us go?”

“Time had passed, and the desert had eaten up not only the road but also the memory of the road.”

“The real trouble is that we are all suffering from a private and secret neurosis: we are afraid of the void.”

“At a certain point in life, we have to stop looking for excuses and start taking responsibility.”

“The years were passing, his youth was passing, the first fires of enthusiasm were burning out, and he was realizing that he had not accomplished anything.”

“But at a certain point you have to make a decision. And I decided I would rather be happy than right.”

“One day, we believe, a fatal door will be opened.”

“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

“At a certain point, to be sure, we have to close our books and step out into the world.”

“Perhaps God is not a being but a hope.”

“It is a consolation to the timid to imagine that they are running away from something terrible, when in reality they are running away from something merely tiresome.”