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Italy Quotes

“This was the gastronomic heartland of Italy, where every inch of the fertile soil was cultivated. In Parma he visited shops festooned with hams, each one postmarked with the stamps of a dozen different inspectors---the regions of Italy are fiercely protective of their produce, and only a handful of towns between the Enza and Stirone Rivers are allowed to designate themselves as true producers of prosciutto di Parma. Because the huge lofts in which the hams are aged are always left open to the wind, the villages of the Enza valley seemed scented with the aromatic sweetness of the meat as he drove through them. In the valley to the north of Parma, he sampled culatello di zibello, perhaps the greatest of all Parma's pork products and for that reason almost never exported, even to other parts of Italy: a pig's rump, marinated in salt and spices, then sewn inside a pig's bladder and aged for eighteen months in the humid air of the flat river basin, a process so delicate that almost half the hams are spoiled before they are ready, but which leaves the rest incomparably delicious.”

RegionsItalyAging ProcessProsciuttoParma
Book:The Food of Love
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“… dreamy Tuscan landscape whose peculiar spell is to make you think that it’s yours forever. That you’re here to stay. That time actually stopped the moment you left the highway and drove down a pine-flanked road that steals your breath each time you spot the house whose sole purpose on earth, it seems, is to compress in the space of seven days the miracle of a lifetime.”

ItalyTuscany
Book:Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere
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“The sight of the centuries-old stone walls never failed to captivate me, evoking a sense of history and grandeur. Stepping inside, I was greeted by the timeless beauty of the castle's architecture. The walls whispered stories of the past, while the ornate furnishings and artwork adorned each room with elegance. It was a place where time seemed to stand still, allowing me to escape the hustle and bustle of daily life and immerse myself in the tranquil atmosphere. I wandered through the halls, taking in the breathtaking views of the Ligurian coastline that stretched out before me. The waters sparkled under the sun's warm embrace, inviting me to lose myself in its vastness.”

ArchitectureItalyCastlePortofino
Book:Serenade of Solitude
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“It makes Celia furious that around ninety percent of the women on Italian TV are fabulous specimens with great legs, superb chests and hair as glossy as a mink's pelt, and that every prime-time programme, whether it be a games show or football analysis, seems to require the presence of an attractive young woman with no discernible function other than to be decorative. She shakes her head in disbelief at the shopping channels, with their delirious women screaming about the wonders of the latest buttock-firming apparatus, and bald blokes in shiny suits shouting ‘Buy my carpets! Buy my jewellery, for God's sake!' hour after hour after hour. She can't resolve the contradictions of a country where spontaneous generosity is as likely to be encountered as petty deviousness; where a predilection for emetically sentimental ballads accompanies a disconcertingly hard-headed approach to interpersonal relationships (friends summarily discarded, to be barely acknowledged when they pass on the streets); where veneration for tradition competes with an infatuation with the latest technology, however low the standard of manufacture (the toilet in Elisabetta's apartment wouldn't look out of place on the Acropolis, but it doesn't flush properly; her brother-in-law's Ferrari is as fragile as a newborn giraffe); where sophistication and the maintenance of ‘la bella figura’ are of primary importance, while the television programmes are the most infantile and demeaning in the world; where there's a church on every corner yet religion often seems a form of social decoration, albeit a form of decoration that's essential to life - 'It's like the wallpaper is holding the house up,’ Celia wrote from Rome. She'll never make sense of Italy, but that's the attraction, or a major part of it, which is something Charlie will never understand, she says. But he does understand it to an extent. He can understand how one might find it interesting for a while, for the duration of a holiday; he just doesn't understand how an English person - an English woman, especially - could live there.”

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Book:Telescope
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“Tínhamos que encarar o rosto obsceno daquela realidade que nos tocou no destino. Aquele barquinho naufragado estava cheio de somalis, essa era realidade! Cheio de homens e mulheres, de seres humanos reduzidos a larvas. Aquela embarcação de papel estava cheia de gente com o nariz como o meu, com a boca como a minha, com os meus cotovelos. Todos nós da diáspora somali, no dia em que ficamos sabendo dessa notícia, não sabíamos o que fazer com os nossos corpos. Os que morreram nas costas da ilha de Lampedusa tinham provocado não somente uma comoção sem igual, mas um mal-estar. Por que eles morreram e nós estávamos vivos? Por que o destino nos dividiu em dois? A estação melhorou muitíssimo nos últimos anos. De uma parte, houve a restauração feita pela prefeitura, de outra, várias comunidades migrantes também se organizaram. Há lojinhas de todo tipo. Quer colocar aplique no cabelo? Quer um pouco de cardamomo para os chás condimentados do seu recanto? Quer um tecido com a história da rainha de Sabá para pendurar nas paredes de casa? Em Termini, encontram-se coisas fantásticas: de saris a raiz de rummay para escovar os dentes, e até goiabada que os brasileiros comem com queijo e chamam romanticamente de 'Romeu & Julieta'. E também quantidades infinitas de eenjera e zighinì. Moha, em sua época de ouro, pintou e bordou. Eu e minha mãe éramos espectadoras mudas das confusões que ele armava. Por um período, ele teve até três nomes. Louis para as mulheres que achavam que ele fosse sul-americano, Ali para as brancas que não sabiam pronunciar seu verdadeiro nome (e todas as vezes lhe diziam 'Que massa, como Ali Babá', e Amedeo para as mais duras na queda e experientes. Só disse seu nome verdadeiro à mulher que se tornou, por fim, a mulher da sua vida. 'Eu não queria estragar o nome. É o que me sobrou da Somália, além de vocês.”

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Book:La mia casa è dove sono
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“Thomas Edison hailed him as the "genius of the modern age”; Gandhi, as a “superman.” Winston Churchill pledged to stand by him in his “struggle against the bestial appetites of Leninism.” Newspapers in Rome, host to the Vatican, referred to him as “the incarnation of God.” In the end, people who had worshipped [Benito Mussolini's] every move hung his corpse upside down next to his mistress’s near a gas station in Milan.”

GovernmentLeadersItalyGandhiWinston ChurchillThomas EdisonBenito Mussolini
Book:Fascism: A Warning
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“The Fascists grew because millions of Italians hated what they were seeing in their country and were afraid of what the world was witnessing in Bolshevik Russia. In speech after speech, Mussolini offered an alternative. He urged his countrymen to reject the capitalists who wanted to exploit them, the Socialists who were bent on disrupting their lives, and the crooked and spineless politicians who talked and talked while their beloved homeland sank further into the abyss. Instead of pitting class against class, he proposed that Italians unite—workers, students, soldiers, and businesspeople—and form a common front against the world. He asked his supporters to contemplate a future in which those who belonged to his movement would always look out for one another, while the parasites who had been holding the country back—the foreign, the weak, the politically unreliable—would be left to fend for themselves. He called on his followers to believe in an Italy that would be prosperous because it was self-sufficient, and respected because it was feared. This was how twentieth-century Fascism began: with a magnetic leader exploiting widespread dissatisfaction by promising all things.”

GovernmentFearLeadersFascismItalyFascistsItaliansBenito Mussolini
Book:Fascism: A Warning
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“Μου αρέσει η Ιταλία; Ιδού το ερώτημα. Είχα πάντα την αίσθηση ότι ήταν τρομερή χώρα. Η απερίγραπτη ομορφιά της συνοδεύεται με τις πιο ζοφερές σκέψεις. Όπου και να πας θα βρείς ίχνη από αίμα και δάκρυα. Για να είμαι ειλικρινής, αυτό ισχύει παντού στον κόσμο, εδώ όμως είναι πολύ πιο εμφανές απ ότι στις άλλες χώρες. Καθώς περνούσαν οι αιώνες, έρχονταν κι έφευγαν πόλεμοι και τυραννίες, τρομερές θεομηνίες, αμέτρητα βάσανα στα παλάτια και στα καλύβια. Διακρίνεις κάτι το ανήλεο στον γαλανό ουρανό που θεώρησε απαθής όλα αυτά. Σε ότι αφορά τον κόσμο, μπορείτε να διακρίνετε αιώνες οδύνης ζωγραφισμένους επάνω σε αυτά τα πρόσωπα και να τους ακούσετε στη φωνή των ανθρώπων. Ναι, ναι, μου αρέσει η Ιταλία. Αλλά με την ευγενέστερη σημασία της λέξης.”

TravelItaly19th CenturyItaly Journey
Book:By the Ionian Sea
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“Norcia is an ancient town with Roman ruins and Renaissance structures that exists like a flat island in a sea of more mountainous towns. It has survived countless strong earthquakes, including two particularly devastating ones a few years back. You can still see some buildings across town in disrepair and chunks of structures missing. But in the intervening years, as the town has rebuilt, it has also taken on a magical air of rebirth. Old buildings mixed in with new patches. The enthusiasm of seeing tourists streaming through again is palpable. You can still see the remnants, but it's clear that even natural devastation can't remove its charm. Parts of the restaurant's back wall have crumbled, but it now has an air of bohemian clutter where plants have taken root in the fractures.”

RebirthItalyOld And NewUmbriaRustic Charm
Book:Recipe for Second Chances
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“Walking around Spoleto is like stepping into an old Italian advertisement bursting with color. Little cafés dot the streets and are already filing up. The shops and houses are all painted with faded versions of sunset hues--- hazy blue, orangey salmon, marigold, and dusty pinks. They all have large rounded black-and-blue shutters and equally archlike stone entrances where large wooden doors are nestled. Streetlamps jut out from the sides of buildings with misty, globe-shaped balls attached to twirling wrought iron.”

CityItalyColorfulUmbria
Book:Recipe for Second Chances
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“It is a field as big as a football stadium carpeted every inch with bright-red poppies. The red is like the kind of color that you see only in oversaturated photos, the kind that doesn't seem to truly exist in real life. Thousands and thousands of poppies stretch out in front of us, one right after the other, as though if you squinted, it would look like a giant red blanket had been laid on top of thousands of gangly green weeds. Dense olive trees line the edges of the field, and behind them, sloping green hills take over the skyline against a cloudless blue sky. I bend down and pick up a poppy, its inky-black center surrounded by delicate red petals clustered and fanning out. It is all so dreamy.”

ItalyPoppiesIn The MomentUmbriaRed Colour
Book:Recipe for Second Chances
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“But the Scottish patron on tour took home with him from Italy much more than his cargo of paintings, sculptures and antique marbles, the tangible souvenirs of his excursion to the south. He took home as well a sophistication of taste and an appreciation of the virtues of classicism which only contact with the Mediterranean inheritance could impart. Only sixty years before the building of the pedimented façade of Duff House in Banff, with its urns and roof-line statuary more in keeping with a southern sky, the typical laird's house in Scotland was still inspired by an economy of display and a strength of fabric deriving from less settled times. The 18th century saw the transportation to Scotland of the idea of the Italian palace, and Hopetoun or Floors or Chatelherault owe their existence to this inspiration.”

ItalyClassicismGrand TourLairdsScottish ArchitectureDuff House
Book:Scots in Italy in the 18th Century
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“He peeled the towel that imprisoned us away and let it fall. I felt it slide softly off my backside, and I felt, too, his rising excite¬ment, hard, erect, pressing against me. My nipples were erect, straining, aching, pressed against his strong warm damp chest, the tangle and pattern of his hair. He was a beast, an animal. My excitement was rising again, to match his. It was as if my heart were about to burst or to flip flop, breathless, into a dark abyss. “Of course, you are crazy, my darling, but, then, so am I.” He kissed me and his oh-so-clever hands seized my waist, tighten¬ing, and then sneaking up my backside, pulling me, pressing me closer, into him. He kissed me again, and his lips moved down my neck to my shoulder and then to my breasts. “Oh,” I said, “Oh.” He bent over me, kissing my collarbone and then my breasts, carefully, slowly, his hands traveling down my back, and over my backside; suddenly, he was on his knees, kissing the whorl of 101 my belly button; then he was forcing me open, gently, gently, his tongue exploring caressing, devouring … “Oh …” I exhaled a deep, shuddering breath. I tipped on the very edge. He bit me, gently. Oooooh! He pulled in the reins, the bit and bridle, of the frisky frothing filly that I had become; this sudden halt made me wilder, crazier; then, once again, he brought me, trembling, up to the very, very edge of the cliff – of orgasm, of loss of self. Then he pulled me back. I blinked and trembled. Around the two of us, there was a whole world, a whole universe. It seemed too vivid to be real, like the backdrop in an opera. Venus was brighter and lower now. The sky had turned deep indigo. One by one, stars appeared.”

ParisRomeEroticaItalyAlpha MaleSubmissiveMediterraneanDark Erotic RomanceErotic Romance Series
Book:The Shaming of Gwendoline C
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“There is an electricity in the air that I feel every time I come to Italy. It enraptures your soul with its incredible history, a sense of the unknown, and a yearning for exploration. But there is also a renewed feeling of life, as if you are born again as your better self, a more authentic self. Somehow your core values are restored, and you are no longer afraid to believe in the things you cannot see.”

ValuesNatureHistoryFantasyMagicElectricityItalyPleiadesSeven SistersRosella Testa
Book:The Lost Pleiades: Seven Sisters and the Sibyls
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“In awe at the sheer beauty of the setting, Celina stepped onto the balcony, which overlooked a terrace garden of fruit trees. "It's so beautiful here." She breathed in, catching the scent of fruit trees below. "What type of fruit are you growing?" "Mostly lemon," Sara said. "But also olive, grapefruit, orange, fig, and pomegranate. With our temperate climate, most everything thrives." Celina peered over the balcony's edge. To one side, a cliff dropped to the sea, while on the other, a terrace sprawled along the hilltop perch. Flaming pink bougainvillea and snowy white jasmine curled around the corners of grapevine-covered archways that framed the shimmering ocean view.”

FlowersItalyFruit TreesNaplesOcean View
Book:The Chocolatier
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“¿Por qué te enamora mi faz de tal suerte que no te vuelves hacia el hermoso jardín que florece bajo los rayos de Cristo? Allí están la rosa en que el Verbo divino encarnó; y allí están los lirios por cuyo aroma se descubre el buen camino.”

LiteratureItalyClassic LiteratureFlorenceDanteDivina ComediaItalian TuscanLate Middle Ages
Book:The Divine Comedy, Volume III: Paradiso, Part 2: Commentary
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“Stefano put an end to this tirade, which was developing rather nicely, I thought, by picking me up off the bench and lifting me till my eyes were on a level with his. My feet dangled helplessly, a good ten inches off the ground. "Just like a man," I said, somewhat breathlessly, because his hands were squeezing my ribs. "When you are losing an argument, you resort to physical violence!" "Oh no," Stefano said. "The physical violence is only a preliminary. This is how I counter arguments such as yours." He kissed me.”

RomanceItalyEnemies To Lovers
Book:Wings of the Falcon
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“Se proprio dovessi esprimere un’opinione personale, definirei gli stagisti carne da macello, l’ultimo anello della catena sociale finanziaria, ma indignarsi per cose sensate non va più di moda da tanto di quel tempo che davvero non vedo perché tocchi a me far notare certe ovvietà. La mia coscienza registra ma rimane in silenzio. Le persone lo fanno per cose di gran lunga peggiori.”

ItalyMilano
Book:Questo amore sarà un disastro
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“La guerra, noi pensavamo che avrebbe immediatamente rovesciato e capovolto la vita di tutti. Invece per anni molta gente rimase indisturbata nella sua casa, seguitando a fare quello che aveva fatto sempre. Quando ormai ciascuno pensava che in fondo se l'era cavata con poco e non ci sarebbero stati sconvolgimenti di sorta, né case distrutte, né fughe o persecuzioni, di colpo esplosero bombe e mine dovunque e le case crollarono, e le strade furono piene di rovine, di soldati e di profughi. E non c'era più uno che potesse far finta di niente, chiudere gli occhi e tapparsi le orecchie e cacciare la testa sotto al guanciale, non c'era. In Italia fu così la guerra.”

WarFascismItaly
Author:Ginsburg Natalia
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“Chi vuole fare il medico solitamente immagina di fare il chirurgo. E all’inizio anch’io mi lasciai sedurre dall’immagine eroica del camice bianco che salva vite dopo ore interminabili in sala operatoria. Poi, tra medicina e chirurgia scelsi la prima: è un territorio d’indagine in continua evoluzione. Mi laureai nel 1991, l’epoca della lotta senza quartiere all’HIV e all’epatite C. Forse per quello mi ritrovai sul sentiero delle malattie infettive. Visto che si tratta spesso di patologie che colpiscono un gran numero di pazienti, mi feci conquistare anche dall’ idea che il mio lavoro potesse aiutare il prossimo, i più deboli e gli emarginati: sono le classi meno agiate la prima linea del fronte.”

ItalyMedicina
Author:Raffaele Bruno, Fabio Vitale
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“È il 20 marzo. Questa mattina in ospedale si presenta un team di medici cinesi che ha affrontato la prima fase dell’emergenza a Wuhan. [...] Lu Ming, è a capo della delegazione. Vuole sapere: «Come organizzate i vostri turni di lavoro?». Gli rispondo che ogni turno è di sette o otto ore. È sorpreso: «I nostri turni sono di quattordici giorni. Restiamo due settimane in ospedale, lavoriamo e dormiamo lì. Poi per altri quattordici giorni rimaniamo chiusi in casa, in quarantena.”

ItalyMedicina
Book:Un medico: La storia del dottore che ha curato il paziente 1
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“Nelle linee guida stilate dal National Institute for Health and Care Excellence per aiutare i medici inglesi a decidere chi dovrebbe ricevere per primo le cure durante la pandemia di Covid-19, sono stati previsti nove livelli, da very fit a terminally ill, e al settimo di questa impietosa classifica si trova anche chi soffre di disturbi cognitivi, includendo pazienti con autismo e altre disabilità intellettuali. Anche alcuni Stati americani, secondo le inchieste di ProPublica, testata online che fa giornalismo investigativo, avrebbero linee guida discriminanti: in Tennessee restano indietro le persone affette da atrofia muscolare; in Minnesota, da cirrosi epatica, malattie polmonari e problemi cardiaci; negli Stati di Washington, New York, Utah, Colorado e Oregon, si valuta «l’abilità fisica e intellettiva generale». In Alabama, il documento Scarce Resource Management recita testualmente che «i disabili psichici sono candidati improbabili per il supporto alla respirazione»”

CoronavirusItalyLombardia
Book:In prima linea
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“abbiamo cominciato a discutere della situazione sanitaria in generale e degli errori che secondo il nostro punto di vista sono stati fatti nella guerra contro il Covid-19. Errori di fondo, di impostazione, e quindi di concetto. Qual è la logica adesso? Se tu hai un male, qualsiasi male, vai dal migliore medico di riferimento in ospedale. Ma così si è lasciato sguarnito il territorio. «Ed è stato questo l’errore fondamentale» ho detto io. «Tutte le battaglie si vincono sul territorio: nelle elezioni, in politica, nelle guerre. Ha sempre vinto chi si è radicato sul territorio. Era la forza del Partito comunista negli anni Settanta e Ottanta, e adesso lo è della Lega. [..] Noi cosa abbiamo fatto invece? Sulla falsariga dei grandissimi agglomerati urbani, abbiamo centralizzato tutto, e adesso abbiamo centralizzato anche il virus, creando una bomba biologica.”

CoronavirusItalyLombardia
Book:In prima linea
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“But in spite of the stones it was marvellous to be working up on the Pian del Sotto: going out on to it while the morning star was still shining brilliantly in a sky that was the colour of blue-black ink; seeing the sun coming up behind Bismantova, below and far away, first illuminating the forest on the mountainside above, then flooding the plateau; sometimes rising behind dark clouds and then shining red through a hole in one of them, as if someone had opened the door of a furnace. And I liked being there when the sun was high overhead and torn white and grey clouds were racing over the mountain top from the west casting dark shadows on the pale fields, and hordes of starlings would swoop over them, and high over everything a goshawk as pale as the clouds and with wing-tips as ragged-looking as they were, soared on the wind which sighed in the trees like the wind in the rigging of a sailing-ship. And I liked it, too, when the sun had gone behind the mountain and everything on the plateau was in shadow and there was a smoky blueness in the woods which were still so green in the sunlight that it was difficult to believe that autumn had come and was well advanced.”

MountainsItalyWwii
Book:Love and War in the Apennines
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“Mi sono sempre chiesto come sia possibile che una classe politica nel complesso mediocre riesca ogni volta a mandare sul colle più alto la persona più adatta, quasi esistesse uno Spirito Santo laico che aleggia sopra Montecitorio nei giorni delle votazioni ( - Massimo Gramellini)”

PoliticsItalyItaliano
Book:Il Colle D'Italia - Le firme del Corriere raccontano la corsa al Quirinale
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“All dwellers in the Teutonic north, looking out at the winter sky, are subject to spasms of nearly irresistible pull, when the entire Italian peninsula from Trieste to Agrigento begins to function like a lodestone. The magnetism is backed by an unseen choir, there are roulades of mandoline strings in the air; ghostly whiffs of lemon blossom beckon the victims south and across the Alpine passes.”

WinterItalyWanderlust
Book:A Time of Gifts
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“Preferring confusion to order is not limited to waiting lines but spills over into other sectors of life, at least in Rome and other more southern regions of the country. One of these is driving, an area where stereotypes about Italians, or at least about Romans, tend to be confirmed. Gridlock, here caused by a willful invasion of the intersection, is a daily occurrence. Red lights and stop signs often are viewed as optional. Using la freccia (directional lights) to signal an intention to turn right or left is infrequent, to say the least, or else left to the last minute, that is when the driver has already begun his turn, frequently from the farthest lane on the opposite side of the roadway.”

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