When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.

- Alberto Moravia

Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of …

- Alberto Moravia

In life there are no problems, that is, objective and external choices; there is only the life which we do not resolve as a problem but which we live…

- Alberto Moravia

I like to compare my method with that of painters centuries ago, proceeding from layer to layer.

- Alberto Moravia

Because the world to-day is so constructed that no one can do what he would like to do, and he is forced, instead, to do what others wish him to do. …

- Alberto Moravia

The less one notices happiness, the greater it is.

- Alberto Moravia

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

- Alberto Moravia

It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.

- Alberto Moravia

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain ev…

- Alberto Moravia