Why didn't they give us a life different from the one we live? - Antonio Delfini

Meanwhile, a Barbery organ, the sound of which reached me from the courtyard of a house in Via Campanoni, changed the course of my reveries. Looking inside the bookcase I realized that the girl was no longer there. (From One year later, p. 214)

She took a long sigh and slowly stood up. Big and heavy, with a wide and long gray skirt with black stripes, and a dark, all-worked blouse that smelled like a closed cupboard with biscuits forgotten inside. (From The Milliner, p. 123)

A writer is always someone, to me, who has failed at something else in life.