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Quotes by Italian Authors
"Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun."
"Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas."
"It is a very honest world, our work. I think you cannot fake anything."
"When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film."
"The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard."
"Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes."
"Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again."
"Our homeland is the whole world. Our law is liberty. We have but one thought, revolution in our hearts."
"It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books."
"We thought the church had withdrawn from interfering in Italian politics... but instead there is a terrible resurgence. These are ugly signs for freedom of expression."
"They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words. And [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy: on experience, the mistress of their masters."
"If you do not raise your eyes you will think you are the highest point."
"Nobility of spirit has more to do with simplicity than ostentation, wisdom rather than wealth, commitment rather than ambition."
"Once the races begin it's more difficult and there is never that much time for testing."
"Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries."
"The children whom nobody leads by the hand are the children who know they are children."
"The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects."
"Every business is there to make money, and making a record is business. This tends to be forgotten by many."
"There are always protests, whether you do something good or bad. Even if you do something beneficial, people say you do it because it's advertising."
"Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy."
"My mother's studies stopped with the third year of primary school, my father with the first. They taught me a deep sense of duty. But nobody was involved in politics in my family."
"When my father was arrested, we didn't know where they had him. My mother found him at the house of torture. It was called Villa Triste."
"Public and private food in America has become eatable, here and there extremely good. Only the fried potatoes go unchanged, as deadly as before."
"My music was typically continental - nothing like, say, The Beatles."
"The disco sound, you must see, is not art or anything so serious."
"Wojtyla was a warrior, who did more to end the Soviet Union than even America."
"The German decision to fight is implacable. Even if they were given more than they ask, they would attack just the same, because they are possessed by the demon of destruction."
"My mother was a regular church-goer and was very tolerant."
"I have closed that page of my life without rancor. I do not disown any of the work done."
"It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end."
"There is no certainty; there is only adventure."
"Memories are like stones, time and distance erode them like acid."
"When I was a boy, unconsciously, spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories."
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