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Quote by Sari Gilbert

“Absenteeism runs rife, with too many unethical doctors willing to supply fake illness certificates. "My dentist was flummoxed when he was asked by a Finanza major to provide his wife with a (false) certificate claiming he’d been performing oral surgery on her on a day she had skipped work. But he did it. “What else could I do? I mean, I might need the guy for a favor sometime.”

Quote by Sari Gilbert

Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City

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Sari Gilbert

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“A corrections box such as which appears in many top US or British papers to rectify misspellings, mistaken dates, faulty identifications and so forth, is generally unheard of here... Once I pointed out to Messagero night editor that the first edition he was putting out had misspelled the name of town where the US president was holding a summit. “Oh, no one will notice,” he shrugged rather than change it.”

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Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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“...until recently Italian institutions were totally unresponsive to consumer needs and concerns, something most people knew, or sensed. Hence their passivity. Nowadays, fewer things seem to be guasti than in the past, but a lot of things that are supposed to work, don’t.”

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Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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“...the seemingly widespread conviction of many ordinary Italians that polite behavior such as standing in line is either a Nazi characteristic or a British folly, one that in any event has no real application to this country. Indeed, although things are now gradually changing, left to themselves many Italians appear constitutionally unable to stand in line. “Where do you think you are, in Bulgaria?” a well-dressed man once snarled at me when I protested that he had pushed ahead of me on the cashier’s line at a downtown café.”

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Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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“I notice that nowadays few drivers in Rome automatically stop for you unless you have the courage to stride forward, arm outstretched, palm up in a dorky “stop-right-now” gesture. Another Roman habit that takes getting used to is that in many areas of town, such as Trastevere where I live, people seem to prefer walking in the street even when sidewalks, however narrow, exist. They seem convinced they are invincible and often don’t even look before crossing the street.”

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Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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“My friend Mimmo, who owns three men’s shops in Rome but who comes from Naples where his father was in the same business, says that nowadays, after two days in Naples, he can’t wait to leave again. “Life in Rome is not easy, but at least there are some certainties. In Naples, forget it. The only thing that counts there is prepotenza,” roughly, bullying or arrogance.”

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Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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“The fact that the policemen didn’t know their stuff didn’t really surprise me. Not long before, I had asked three different Rome traffic policemen, or vigili, how old a child had to be before being able to ride in the front passenger seat of a car and had gotten three totally different answers. Not so hard to understand, I guess for two reasons. First, if you get your job through pull and not merit then you don’t really need to get good grades on a qualifying exam and, second, if Parliament changes the law every few years it is understandably difficult to keep up.”

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Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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