Donna Leon Quotes

He saw that no one owned anything really. It's all rented, or borrowed. Our possessions will outlast us, we'll desert them in the end.

All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.

As human beings we have a tendency when we like something to tie it up and make sure it's there for a long time. I've been working on being able to let things go. I don't think I ever want to buy property again.

Everything I have is for sale. Material items are just things that pass through your hands that mean very little or nothing.

Property is theft. Nobody "owns" anything. When you die, it all stays here.

Time stays, we go.

What you possess in the world will be found at the day of your death to belong to someone else. But what you are will be yours forever.

No man can lose what he never had.

I don't want to own anything that won't fit into my coffin.

Even if you live forty or fifty years in this world, and then die, you cannot take all your goods with you.

I don't want to be something that just comes and goes.

Let's be honest: material comes and goes.

If you acquire things, you have to let them go.

All of our miseries are nothing but attachment. Our whole ignorance and darkness is a strange combination of a thousand and one attachments. And we are attached to things which will be taken away by the time of death, or even perhaps before. You may be very much attached to money but you can go bankrupt tomorrow. You may be very much attached to your power and position, your presidency, your prime ministership, but they are like soap bubbles. Today they are here, tomorrow not even a trace will be left.

I have a suit in my closet with the pocket cut out. It's a reminder to me that I won't be taking anything with me. The last suit I wear won't need any pockets.

Everything you gather is just one that you can lose.

A man that simply loads himself down with possessions of which he has no actual need, when he dies slips out of them--as a little insect might slip out of some parasite shell into which it has ensconced itself--into the grave, and is forgotten.

That which you look upon as your own you may keep only so long as the world allows you to own it.

We have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either.' There are no U-Hauls behind hearses.

No one owns anything. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them. And if nothing belongs to me, then there's no point wasting my time looking after things that aren't mine.

Everything comes out of nothingness and goes back into nothingness. Hence there is no need for attachment, because attachment will bring misery. Soon it will be gone. The flower that has blossomed in the morning, by the evening will be gone. Don't get attached; otherwise in the evening there will be misery. Then there will be tears, then you will miss the flower. Enjoy while it is. But remember, it has come out of nothing, and it will go back to nothing. And the same is true about everything, even about people.

Here you can be a billionaire, like Mark Zuckerberg rich, but you are going to die and you are here for a while and ultimately all of your stuff is kind of like a rental.

At the opening of our exhibition at Deitch Projects in New York we featured a wall of 10,000 bananas. Green bananas created a pattern against a background of yellow bananas spelling out the sentiment: Self-confidence produces fine results. After a number of days the green bananas turned yellow too and the type disappeared. When the yellow background bananas turned brown, the type (and the self-confidence) appeared again, only to go away when all bananas turned brown.

You can't take your stuff with you when you die. That doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy it while you're alive. Why not? But it's all pretty silly. I fall victim to it. I mean, I want nice stuff too. So I guess I'm poking fun at myself as well as other materialistic people.

You stick your finger in the water and you pull it out, and that is how much of a hole you leave when you're gone.