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hide / that when the sun bares it.' It's the end of one of my poems."

"Your poems are good. I can't tell you exactly why - I'm not a critic - but I know they're good. Keep writing, Daughter."

"I could stop instead! The moment I write is fantastic. But first, as it is born and develops in me, first I have to suffer too much. And I'm tired of suffering."

"I'd tell you it's part of our job, if you weren't afraid of being banal." 

"Totam aeque vitam miscet dolor et gaudium*. Phaedrus." 

"Surprise: I didn't know you were so cultured." 

"Just fresh out of school, Papa. Wait a few years and I won't even remember the difference between Cicero and Caesar."

"Try to remember this, Daughter: there is little difference between you and me. We are the same inside." I look at the mullioned windows and the balconies with white stone columns that chase each other trembling in the water, broken at times by the sliding of a passing gondola. A cat, chased by a dog, runs across the bridge, climbs onto a lamppost, looks down and: "Meow!" he says defiantly.

"Now that the war is over and they are no longer eaten, if you took a census of the cats, you would certainly find that they are as numerous as the churches of Venice." 

"But perhaps fewer than mine. Even if you are good at math, it won't be easy for you to count my cats when you come to Finca Vigia." 

"I wish I could really come!"

"You will come. Now that Gianfranco works in Havana it would be absurd if you didn't come to see him. You with Giovanna, as was decided in Cortina. I like Gio, I like his excellent brain and his eyes similar to the tallest and purest alpine lakes."

*Pain and joy mixes all of life equally