Appartengo alla minoranza silenziosa. Sono di quei pochi che non hanno più nulla da dire e aspettano. What? Let everything be clarified? È improbabile. Age has brought me the certainty that nothing can be clarified: in this country I love there is simply no truth. Much smaller and more important countries than ours have their own unique truth, noi ne abbiamo infinite versioni. The cause? I leave it to the historians, to sociologists, to psychoanalysts, at the round tables the task of indicating the causes, io ne subisco gli effetti. And with me a few others: because almost everyone has a solution to offer us: "their" truth, that is, something that does not conflict with their interests. Alla tavola rotonda bisognerà anche invitare uno storico dell’arte per fargli dire quale influenza può avere avuto il barocco sulla nostra psicologia. In fact, in Italy the shortest line between two points is the arabesque. We live in a network of arabesques.

Ennio Flaiano, The Solitude of the Satyr, Adelphi 1996