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Quotes by Italian Authors
"Unfortunately, goodness and honor are rather the exception than the rule among exceptional men, not to speak of geniuses."
"The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard."
"Time abides long enough for those who make use of it."
"Nobody taught Picasso how to paint - he learned for himself. And nobody can teach you to be a producer. You can learn the mechanics, but you can't learn what's right about a script or a director or an actor. That comes from instinct and intuition. It comes from inside you."
"If you lived in a provincial town like Torre Annunziata, where there was nothing to do in the evening but go to the movies with your friends, the cinema was a world of fantasy. I had always been in love with it."
"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."
"My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search."
"I did not know then what Brother William was seeking, and to tell the truth, I still do not know today, and I presume he himself did not know, moved as he was solely by the desire for truth, and by the suspicion - which I could see he always harbored - that the truth was not what was appearing to him at any given moment."
"The restaurants close here in Salzburg. They don't really have a nightlife in the winter time."
"Women have not yet realized the cowardice that resides, for if they should decide to do so, they would be able to fight you until death; and to prove that I speak the truth, amongst so many women, I will be the first to act, setting an example for them to follow."
"The two great cultural and political currents of Italy have always only been concerned with the masses."
"I was on leave from local and regional politics, as long as I was a Minister."
"Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people."
"The ignorant man always adores what he cannot understand."
"Don't get married to an actress because they're also actresses in bed."
"When you share your last crust of bread with a beggar, you mustn't behave as if you were throwing a bone to a dog. You must give humbly, and thank him for allowing you to have a part in his hunger."
"Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel."
"The education of peoples is a necessary precondition to peace."
"I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me."
"People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not."
"The sincere friends of this world are as ship lights in the stormiest of nights."
"I have the most profound respect for the Department of Justice and the FTC. We in Europe are a younger and I would say junior institution to the historical antitrust experience of the US."
"We shall meet again before long to march to new triumphs."
"Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man's expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid."
"Whoever you are, you will not write this book. I can tell you nothing. Do not call me again. Ever."
"All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part."
"When I need the idea, I can find it immediately. I have a horror of rewriting or deleting; the parts of my composition are carried in my head 'till I can write them down, even to the last note. Then I do not alter a jot."
"But each time I seemed to be climbing into a roller coaster and finding myself coming through the downhill run with that sort of dazed feeling that we all know."
"I think that climatic changes have a natural causes according many geological data... I am very glad to sign the U.S. Senate's report of scientists against the theory of man-made global warming."
"In the strange heat all litigation brings to bear on things, the very process of litigation fosters the most profound misunderstandings in the world."
"I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space."
"A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection - not an invitation for hypnosis."
"A half dozen pictures would just about be enough for the life of an artist, for my life."
"There is no government in Europe where ministers go through that kind of confirmation process, which in fact is modeled on the way the U.S. cabinet members are confirmed."
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