Oriana Fallaci

Heroes can be sweet.

The Muslims refuse our culture and try to impose their culture on us. I reject them, and this is not only my duty toward my culture-it is toward my values, my principles, my civilization.

The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.

Is it right to shoot the poor prostitute or a woman who is unfaithful to her husband, or a man who loves another man?

I was a little girl fighting as a partisan against Nazi-Fascism.

I have reached the conclusion that those who have physical courage also have moral courage. Physical courage is a great test.

I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born.

I find it shameful that in nearly all the universities of Europe, Palestinian students sponsor and nurture anti-Semitism.

I don't want to hear about my death.

I didn't want to kill a man. I'm not capable of killing a man. I wanted to kill a tyrant.

I cry, sometimes, because I'm not 20 years younger, and I'm not healthy. But if I were, I would even sacrifice my writing to enter politics.

I am known for a life spent in the struggle for freedom, and freedom includes the freedom of religion.

I am disgusted by the anti-Semitism of many Italians, of many Europeans.

I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple!

I am a danger to myself if I get angry.

This Islam business kidnapped me.

I have expressed my opinion through the written word through my books, that is all.

Laura Bush has the face of my mother when my mother was young. The face, the body, the voice. The first time I saw on TV Laura Bush, I got frozen because it was as if my mother was not dead. 'Oh, Mama,' I said, 'Mama.'

I have never met a man more shy than Clark Gable. He was so shy, you couldn't make him talk.

We must take positions. Our weakness in the West is born of the fact of so-called 'objectivity.' Objectivity does not exist - it cannot exist!... The word is a hypocrisy which is sustained by the lie that the truth stays in the middle. No, sir: Sometimes truth stays on one side only.

I've always disliked kamikazes, that is, people who commit suicide in order to kill others. Starting with the Japanese ones from World War II. I never considered them Pietro Miccas who torch the powder and go up with the citadel in order to block the arrival of the enemy troops at Torino. I never considered them soldiers.

The more democratic and open a society is, the more it's exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more it risks hijackings or massacres like the ones that took place for many years in Italy and Germany and other parts of Europe.

What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It's their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.

I know I am a writer; it is the only thing I am sure of.

I must admit that I am not generous with weak people. It's not in my nature or in my personality. My parents were not generous with weak people, see?

The larger truth, the universal truth that you can give in a novel, is far greater than what you can give through journalism.

I don't hide. I never have. I stay at home because I like to stay at home, and at home I work.

My soldier weapon is the weapon of truth.

A civilization, a culture, cannot survive without passion, cannot be saved without passion.

When my father was arrested, we didn't know where they had him. My mother found him at the house of torture. It was called Villa Triste.

Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense.

The most humiliating thing a woman can be is a coquette.

It must be terribly lonely to be a king instead of a man.

I defend Israel's right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time.

Khomeini was not a puppet like Arafat or Qaddafi or the many other dictators I met in the Islamic world. He was a sort of Pope, a sort of king - a real leader.

It is the mainspring of life, courage. And courage has many faces.

How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did? He committed suicide!

America's vulnerability comes precisely from its strength, its wealth, its power and its modernity. It's the usual story of the dog chasing its own tail.

To speak of oneself means to lay bare one's own soul, expose it like a body to the sun. To lay bare one's own soul is not at all like taking off one's brassiere on a crowded beach!

I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger.

Glory is a heavy burden, a murdering poison, and to bear it is an art. And to have that art is rare.

Wojtyla was a warrior, who did more to end the Soviet Union than even America.

Arafat contradicts himself every five minutes. He always plays the double-cross, lies even if you ask him what time it is.

We are an age without leaders. We stopped having leaders at the end of the 20th century.

You cannot survive if you do not know the past.

I no longer have the energy to get really angry, like I used to.

The increased presence of Muslims in Italy and in Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom.

You cannot work and be at home with your child. But you want both.

I love soldiers. They are my kids, they are my children.

You cannot govern, you cannot administrate, with an ignoramus.