I don't know if you ever really feel like you've made it.

You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet them. You see in their eyes that they expected something so entirely different, and here they are meeting... you.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

Homesickness is universal. But Neapolitan homesickness goes back further than the accidents of domicile. It is nostalgia for love and loss themselves, a soul-sickness caused by the very idea of leaving.