Quotessence
Home / Topics / Italy Quotes

Italy Quotes

Browse 415 quotes about Italy.

Italy Quotes

“It is late afternoon and the daily, or nightly, game of cat and mouse between Rome’s vigili urbani, or traffic police, and the unlicensed street peddlers who set up their portable tables and lamps in Piazza Sant’Egidio where I live, or nearby, is about to start. And, as usual, the mice will win. Not because they are smarter but simply because they care more about breaking the law than the authorities care about enforcing it.”

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

“For historical reasons – centuries spent as the subjects of warring city-states with the rule of law often taking a back seat to power politics and family loyalties – many Italians, especially those from points south, have little respect for the law and, seemingly, little understanding of its purpose, which is that of setting the boundaries for civil cohabitation.”

Law EnforcementItalyLaw And OrderItalian CultureItalians
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“In Italy, most laws are honored more in the breach than the observance. “Fatta la legge, trovato l’inganno”, goes one saying that means, “pass a law and we’ll find a way to get around it”. You don’t have to spend much time in Rome to realize that stop signs, and even red lights, are often disregarded, as are those reading “no parking or standing”, and even “one way”.”

RomeItalyDisobedienceItalian CultureItaliansNational CharacterNo LawIgnoring Rules
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“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.”

ItalyItalian CultureItaliansNo LawIgnoring Rules
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“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.”

JournalismItalyAttention To DetailJournalistic IntegrityItalian Culure
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“...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.”

ItalyPassivityItalian CultureUnresponsivePublic InstitutionsUnresponsiveness
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“...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.”

ItalyPolitenessDisorganizedItalian CultureItaliansStanding In LineImpolitenessBritish Folly
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“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.”

WalkingDrivingRomeItalyItalian CultureItaliansCrossing The StreetCrazy Drivers
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“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.”

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

“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.”

DrivingItalyPolicemenDisorganizedItalian CultureWork CultureItaliansUnprofessional
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“Until the beginning of 2003, Italians smoked everywhere and considered it quite normal; they lit up inside stores, including those which sell fabric or paper goods, in the airport, ignoring repeated loudspeaker announcements that no smoking was allowed, at the greengrocers where cigarette ash dangled perilously over the zucchini and the cherry tomatoes, and even in hospitals, although from time to time crack Italian Carabinieri units called the NAS, set up to enforce health standards, would appear, unannounced, and hand out hefty fines to all the doctors and nurses they found in flagrante. Once I even had blood taken by two white-coated doctors who took my vital fluid with cigarettes dangling from their lips, an open window their only concession to my passive smoke concerns.”

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

“Indeed, don’t be surprised to find yourself in a taxi in which the right-side window doesn’t work or is missing its wind-down handle. The driver has done this deliberately to keep himself from getting a draft on his neck that will give him problems al cervicale, the cervical spine. He is also likely to eschew air conditioning on the grounds that it will give him pneumonia.”

DriversItalyTaxiItalian CultureItaliansTaxi DriverUnprofessionalism
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“According to a study done in 2011 by the welfare department of the CISL trade union, in the three-year period from 2006 to 2008 it could take as long as 540 days to have a mammogram scheduled (Puglia), 90 days to get a bone-density scan done (Veneto) and 74 days to see a geriatrics specialist in the generally well-organized Tuscany region. I myself know someone who had to wait seven months to get a heart bypass, and one of my next-door neighbors here in Rome waited almost a year for a hip replacement. Of course, this is not unusual for a country with national health; all the Brits I know decry their own system violently and even in Sweden, once a model for such things, there is considerable disorganization. The fact remains that the Italian national health system is often more virtual than real, forcing people who can afford it to look for an alternative solution.”

SocialismHealthcareItalyItaliansLong WaitNational Health ServiceHealth SystemsWealfare
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“And there may be some connection, too, with the Roman Catholic Church’s somewhat flexible attitude towards sin and thus, in general, towards wrongdoing. Otherwise, how to explain that 137 years after Italy became a modern nation-state, so many people still choose simply to ignore laws they don’t like. Maybe other nationalities would be the same if in their countries, too, law enforcement were considered an optional, even by the people charged with that task.”

ItalyDisobedienceItalian CultureItaliansRoman CatholicismNo LawIgnoring The Rules
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“La sera di lunedì 27 maggio, il Salvini Day, lo spread si appresta a scollinare i 280 punti. E più il differenziale sale, più il leader leghista deride i mercati e lancia criptici riferimenti a non meglio identificati speculatori «a cui conviene tenere sotto scacco l’Italia». Lancia una serie di accuse degne delle farneticazioni notturne di un teorico del complotto più che di un ministro dell’Interno. E la mattina successiva ricomincia fresco come una rosa, ridimensionando la portata dei problemi della precaria situazione finanziaria del Belpaese.”

PoliticsItaly
Book:Questa non è l'Italia
Create image

“Il leader leghista portava lo scompiglio, aizzava lo spread e pareva contento. Come se si stesse divertendo. Le sue dichiarazioni sempre più agguerrite e la sua banda di colonnelli antieuro hanno conti “nuato a causare danni alla reputazione italiana, già traballante, nei giorni successivi alla vittoria delle elezioni. E chi lo aiutava ad alzare la posta in palio, a rilanciare ancora? Naturalmente il suo fedele compare antieuro, Claudio Borghi, l’ex funzionario della Deutsche Bank di Milano che ormai si dava arie da profeta economico. Un membro della prima ora di quel gruppo di militanti antieuro che includeva Paolo Savona, Alberto Bagnai e in seconda battuta Francesca Donato e Antonio Maria Rinaldi.”

PoliticsItaly
Book:Questa non è l'Italia
Create image

“Certe volte Salvini, Borghi e la loro corte dei miracoli sembrano dei veri teorici del complotto. Quando invece la “realtà è che Salvini è il politico più furbo d’Italia, il più abile protagonista dei palazzi del potere nostrani: quando lui e Borghi si presentano in televisione o sui social a proporre soluzioni irrealizzabili, se non addirittura assurde tipo i minibot, o l’espansione del debito pari a decine di miliardi all’anno per il prossimo triennio, lo fanno perché sono convinti che la maggioranza del loro elettorato sia troppo ignorante per comprendere le conseguenze dei provvedimenti proposti. O è così, o ci credono davvero, il che sarebbe ancora più preoccupante.”

PoliticsItaly
Book:Questa non è l'Italia
Create image

“We navigate the produce stands, plucking palms full of cherries from every pile we pass, chewing them and spitting the seeds on the ground. We eat tiny tomatoes with taut skins that snap under gentle pressure, releasing the rabid energy of the Sardinian sun trapped inside. We crack asparagus like twigs and watch the stalks weep chlorophyll tears. We attack anything and everything that grows on trees- oranges, plums, apricots, peaches- leaving pits and peels, seeds and skins in our wake. Downstairs in the seafood section, the heart of the market, the pace quickens. Roberto turns the market into a roving raw seafood bar, passing me pieces of marine life at every stand: brawny, tight-lipped mussels; juicy clams on the half shell with a shocking burst of sweetness; tiny raw shrimp with beads of blue coral clinging to their bodies like gaudy jewelry. We place dominoes of ruby tuna flesh on our tongues like communion wafers, the final act in this sacred procession.”

ItalySeafoodFruits And VegetablesForagingSardinia
Book:Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
Create image

“Down every aisle a single thought follows me like a shadow: Brand Italy is strong. When it comes to cultural currency, there is no brand more valuable than this one. From lipstick-red sports cars to svelte runway figures to enigmatic opera singers, Italian culture means something to everyone in the world. But nowhere does the name Italy mean more than in and around the kitchen. Peruse a pantry in London, Osaka, or Kalamazoo, and you're likely to find it spilling over with the fruits of this country: dried pasta, San Marzano tomatoes, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, jars of pesto, Nutella. Tucked into the northwest corner of Italy, sharing a border with France and Switzerland, Piedmont may be as far from the country's political and geographical center as possible, but it is ground zero for Brand Italy. This is the land of Slow Food. Of white truffles. Barolo. Vermouth. Campari. Breadsticks. Nutella. Fittingly, it's also the home of Eataly, the supermarket juggernaut delivering a taste of the entire country to domestic and international shoppers alike. This is the Eataly mother ship, the first and most symbolically important store for a company with plans for covering the globe in peppery Umbrian oil, and shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano Vacche Rosse. We start with the essentials: bottle opener, mini wooden cutting board, hard-plastic wineglasses. From there, we move on to more exciting terrain: a wild-boar sausage from Tuscany. A semiaged goat's-milk cheese from Molise. A tray of lacy, pistachio-pocked mortadella. Some soft, spicy spreadable 'nduja from Calabria. A jar of gianduja, the hazelnut-chocolate spread that inspired Nutella- just in case we have any sudden blood sugar crashes on the trail.”

BrandsItalyFood ProductionNutellaPiedmont
Book:Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
Create image

“The Langhe is a paradise, a giardino: pears, apples, pomegranates, chestnuts. Everything you could want to eat falling from a tree. And above all, nocciole. You see those trees? Those are South American hazelnuts. Fatter. Rounder. There are also the smaller Turkish hazelnuts, but Ferrero Rocher uses the big ones to make Nutella. And wine- everywhere, wine. Barbera, Bonarda, Dolcetto, and the king, Nebbiolo, the king of all grapes.”

WineNutsItalyFruitsEnvironmental ValuesHazelnutLanghePiedmont
Book:Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
Create image

“New laws are always being passed but they alter almost nothing. Their real purpose is, precisely, to engender debate, to give the people of Italy a chance to express a lively opposition to the state so unanimous that it actually creates a supportive atmosphere of unity and national well-being. Everyone feels the state is fleecing them, treating them unfairly, so that feeling cheated by the state - and finding some small ways of cheating the state - turns out to be the cement that binds the nation together. In this way, the state is sacrificed to the idea of the nation.”

ItalyNationState
Book:Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence
Create image

“On a chilly morning in early January, a self-described ‘militant’ opened the door of CasaPound’s squat in central Rome. Inside, he pointed to the walls of the corridor, colorfully painted with the names of the party’s heroes. Italian leader Benito Mussolini and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, important historical inspirations for contemporary fascists, were among the more obvious names. Less explicable were names such as Ahmad Shah Massoud, the late Afghan militia leader who battled the Soviets and the Taliban alike, and Jack Kerouac, the American novelist and pioneer of the Beat Generation.”

EuropeFascismItalyFar RightAntifaNeo NazisCasapound
Book:Alerta! Alerta!: Snapshots of Europe's Anti-fascist Struggle
Create image

“The mainstay of Italian coffee lore, la tazzina del caffe, or an espresso, as served by one’s local bar and during the day consumed - generally - standing up, is another one of those things about which Italians have very strong feelings. The purists want is very dense, ristrettissimo, which is the way they serve it in Naples...”

CoffeeItalyEspressoNaplesItalian CuisineItalian Culture
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“How an Englishman came to be ‘Cooking up a Country’ in Italy It was a book that got me into this mess. Almost twenty years ago after reading Annie Hawes excellent, Extra Virgin, I jumped on a flight intent on experiencing Liguria for myself. What I discovered here has had me coming back for holidays ever since. Until two years ago, that is, when I bowed to the inevitable British compulsion to own property.”

TravelCookingRecipesItalyFoodieChefsLiguriaRiviera
Author:James Vasey
Create image

“If Alessandro and Rosy are working from a disadvantage in terms of product recognition, they have put generations of accumulated experience into practice to fill the menu with dozens of little tastes of Como. They make fragrant, full-flavored stocks from the bones and bodies of perch and chub. They cure whitefish eggs in salt, creating a sort of freshwater bottarga, ready to be grated over pasta and rice. Shad is brined in vinegar and herbs, whitefish becomes a slow-cooked ragù or a filling for ravioli, and pigo and pike form the basis of Mella's polpettine di pesce, Pickled, dried, smoked, cured, pâtéd: a battery of techniques to ensure that nothing goes to waste. If you can make it with meat, there's a good chance Alessandro and Rosy have made it with lake fish. And then there's missoltino, the lake's most important by-product, a staple that stretches back to medieval times and has been named a presidio by Slow Food, a designation reserved for the country's most important ingredients and food traditions. The people still making missoltino can be counted on a single hand. Alessandro guts and scales hundreds of shad at a time, salts the bodies, and hangs them like laundry to dry under the sun for forty-eight hours or more. The dried fish are then layered with bay leaves, packed into metal canisters, and weighed down. Slowly the natural oils from the shad escape and bubble to the surface, forming a protective layer that preserves the missoltino indefinitely. It can be used as a condiment of sorts, a weapons-grade dose of lake umami to be detonated in salads and pastas. In its most classic preparation, served with toc, a thick, rich scoop of polenta slow cooked in a copper pot over a wood fire, it tastes of nothing you've eaten in Italy- or anywhere else.”

ItalyFishItalian CookingLake ComoLake Water
Book:Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
Create image

“Grand Tourists and their retinues typically crossed the choppy English Channel at the Port of Dover, stepping onto French soil in Calais. From there, the parties would set off on a three-day trek to Paris. Once fitted for new clothes, many proceeded to decamp for a season or longer for their first taste of Continental culture. (...) Not everyone took the same route. The more adventurous traveled from Paris to Lyon then farther south to Marseille, journeying by sea from Marseille to Livorno, in the Tuscany region, or Genoa, although the Italians’ lack of necessary sailing skills at that time made passage risky. Meanwhile, the wary typically trekked from Paris to Lyon then over the Alps. For the latter, Geneva was a subsequent stop, by default rather than preference. Despite the breathtaking beauty of the Alps, coaches—the mode of transport used at the time—simply could not traverse the treacherous Mont Cenis pass, ascending 6,827 feet. Invariably, the harrowing peaks and rocky precipices forced willing travelers to navigate by mule or sled. Regardless of the hassles, those who pressed on reaped extravagant rewards. (...) All roads, however, ultimately led to Rome, befitting its vaunted history as the intellectual, scientific and artistic center of the Renaissance and Baroque culture.”

FranceItalyGrand Tour
Book:The Allure of French & Italian Decor
Create image

“Wheat from northern Italy is 'soft' - that is, it is already low in gluten so is ideal for pastry-making. Butter was the fat of choice for cooking in northern Italy (and a sign of wealth), compared with the oil of the south of the country, and there is no doubt that butter makes the finest pastry for sweet pies and tarts. (...) The situation in Britain was different. In Britain, butter was food for the poor. The wealthy in Britain preferred lard, maybe because the animal had to be killed to obtain the fat, thus its perceived value was higher. Lard makes superb huge 'raised' or 'standing' pies full of meat, which flourished to become one of the jewels in England's culinary crown.”

FoodBritainPieItalyBakingFood WritingFood AnthropologyFood HistoryGlobal History
Book:Pie: A Global History
Create image

“Au XVIe siècle, en Italie, entre Rome et les collines dorées de Toscane, un nouveau monde est en train de naître, grâce à de grandes familles de souverains flamboyants. Ils savent s’entourer de vaillants militaires, d’artistes et d’écrivains de renom, mais aussi de femmes extravagantes et talentueuses. Pour leur rendre grâce, on invente un nouveau qualificatif les distinguant des vulgaires prostituées, ce seront des « courtisanes », cortigianae , des femmes ayant des manières les rendant dignes de figurer à la cour.”

ItalyTuscanyCourtesan
Book:La petite histoire des courtisanes: Elles ont touché le pouvoir. Mais qui sont-elles vraiment ?
Create image