Italo Svevo

“Words are liars. They create a reality of their own.”

“To be loved is a great thing; to love is a greater thing.”

“There is no more certain way of making a man lose his balance than to give him a lot of freedom.”

“I think that the dream is a second life, and that life is a second dream.”

“Writing is a way of ordering the world, of making sense of it.”

“The last cigarette is the hardest to give up.”

“Health doesn't analyze itself, nor does it look at itself in the mirror. It is only we sick people who know something about ourselves.”

“A confession is not a lie. It is a new reality.”

“I am a man of words, and I am not my own man.”

“Life is neither beautiful nor ugly, but original.”

“Actual life is a drab thing, a matter of patience and resignation.”

“Sickness is a conviction, and one can have it only when one is sure of one's health.”

“The present, for me, is the only thing that has no value.”

“The true disease is the conviction that one is sick.”

“Life is a little like a disease. It has its crises and its periods of remission.”