“I know that I come from mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York, specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am. And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.” PeopleKnowsWorldKindAmericaCenturyNew YorkAreasCatholicWho I AmItalianImpressedUrban20th CenturyDecencyDowntownRoman CatholicItalian AmericanSkid Row Author:Martin Scorsese
“I fell in love. It felt exactly like a fall, a head-over-heels tumble into a state of unbearable lightness. The earth tilted on its axis. I did not believe in romantic love at the time, thinking it a human construct, an invention of fourteenth century Italian poets. I was as unprepared for love as I had been for goodness and beauty. Suddenly, my heart seemed swollen, too large for my chest.” ThinkingBelieveHumansHeartStatesEarthFallFeltCenturyPoetMy HeartGoodnessInventionChestsItalianHeelsRomantic LoveConstructsUnbearableLightnessAxesUnpreparedSwollenUnbearable LightnessHead Over Heels Book:What's So Amazing about Grace? Source: What's So Amazing about Grace?
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish ora German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making "ladies" dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.” ChildrenMadeHomeMotherGirlBlackClassBoysWifeMiddleCenturyFlowerClothesDaughterDressesWarmCirclesMiddle ClassItalianArtificialProtectedCoalNineteenth CenturyCottonLaundryMiningWelshMother And ChildBlack GirlMiddle Class FamilySweatshopsArtificial Flowers Author:Stephanie Coontz
“Recently I was reading somewhere or other an Italian curio-dealer who attempted to sell a 17th century crucifix to J.P. Morgan. Inside it was concealed a stiletto. What a perfect symbol of the Christian religion.” ChristianReadingPerfectCenturySellsSymbolsItalianConcealedDealer17th CenturyStilettos Book:The complete works of George Orwell Source: The complete works of George Orwell
“I have been interested in the 12th century since my 20s when it was very fashionable to say of anybody with whom you disagreed, which was basically anybody over the age of 30, "One of the great minds of the 12th century", and one day I thought, "I don't know anything about the 12 century." So I started buying books, reading about it, and I discovered it was a period of great flowering, it was a Renaissance before what we think is the Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance of the 16th century.” ThinkingKnowsMindHas BeensBookAgeReadingCenturyPeriodsOne DayBuyingItalianFashionableBook ReadingRenaissanceFloweringGreat MindsItalian RenaissanceBuying Books Author:Yitzhak Rabin