Italian Quotes

I think because both of my parents were essentially salespeople, and Italian-Americans, I always seemed to get along with people; I had a knack of finding something to talk about. ~ Bob Colacello

Il bel far niente means 'the beauty of doing nothing' ... [it] has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement. You don't necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I was a huge horror fan, especially in my teenage years. Back then, there were a lot of Italian horror movies - some zombie, some just really strange movies that made no sense. I was really into shock and gore. ~ Chuck Hogan

What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy. [Addressing to a delegation of Italian socialists in Moscow after Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922] ~ Vladimir Lenin

Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited. ~ Steve Earle

Will gritted his teeth as Will Junior and Nellie continued their debate. He loved his son, but he found him
and many members of hisgeneration
ruthless in their pursuit of money and standing and harsh toward the less fortunate. He had reminded him on many occasions that both the McClanes and their mother's family
the Van der leydens
had at one time been immigrants. As had members of all the city's wealthy families. But Will's lectures made no difference to his son. He was an American. And those getting off the boat at Castle Garden were not. Italian, Irish, Chinese, Polish
nationality made no difference. They were lazy, stupid, and dirty. Their numbers spelled ruin for the country. p. 264 ~ Jennifer Donnelly

The first language that I learned was Italian in Italy in the early and middle-'60s and I had to do that to keep up with the young men who were courting my wife. ~ Clive James

Hey, I just thought of something."
"What?"
"When we're together, we make one whole Italian. ~ Jenna Evans Welch

I beg you, put an end to the occupation. I beg the Italian government and the Italian people to put pressure on the government to pull out. ~ Giuliana Sgrena

An Italian proverb says: The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Even at the very dawn of Christianity, there was a commonly-accepted theory known as the Blood Libel, which stated matter-of-factly that Jewish people regularly sacrificed non-Jewish babies and used the blood of those babies in Judaic rituals. Later, in medieval times, plagues and other diseases were commonly blamed on Jews, resulting in the enforcement of Apartheid-like conditions, separating Jewish communities from the rest of the population throughout Europe. For example, in the Papal States – territories in the Italian Peninsula that existed throughout the middle ages and medieval times that were governed directly by the Pope – Jews were only allowed to reside in neighborhoods called ghettos. They were regularly forced to convert to Christianity in various barbaric ways such as involuntary baptisms. The stealing of Jewish babies from their parents by Church officials was also not uncommon and the children would often then be brought up as Catholic orphans never knowing of their Jewish heritage. ~ James Morcan

I love the Italian culture - it's a beautiful culture. I love the language, the Italian people, their music, their attitudes ... I just love it! Sometimes I think I'm an Italian trapped in a Spanish woman's body. ~ Penelope Cruz

I had lots of posters on my bedroom wall of players like Zico, many Brazilian and Italian players, not many players in particular but I loved football so much and I especially loved skilful players. ~ Emmanuel Petit

Yet if anyone cares to read over the now crumbling minutes giving an account of the meetings at which the Italian Fasci di Combattimento were founded, he will find not a doctrine but a series of pointers ... It may be objected that this program implies a return to the guilds (corporazioni). No matter! ... I therefore hope this assembly will accept the economic claims advanced by national syndicalism. ~ Benito Mussolini

You've got to be good to each other ... it really comes back to respect. I was raised in a very Catholic, Italian family and it was all about respect. Don't talk badly about [your partner] the second they walk out the door; really preserve your relationship and be good to each other. Treat it like gold. ~ Giuliana Rancic

The Mob loved Sinatra not just because he was Italian-American, but because he had crossed over into a nether world in which they could never belong. And he got there because he could do something few people in the world could do as well, and no one in the same way: he could sing. ~ Nancy Jo Sales

One evening in April a thirty-two-year-old woman, unconscious and severely injured, was admitted to the hospital in a provincial town south of Copenhagen. She had a concussion and internal bleeding, her legs and arms were broken in several places, and she had deep lesions in her face. A gas station attendant in a neighboring village, beside the bridge over the highway to Copenhagen, had seen her go the wrong way up the exit and drive at high speed into the oncoming traffic. The first three approaching cars managed to maneuver around her, but about 200 meters after the junction she collided head-on with a truck. The Dutch driver was admitted for observation but released the next day. According to his statement he started to brake a good 100 meters before the crash, while the car seemed to actually increase its speed over the last stretch. The front of the vehicle was totally crushed, part of the radiator was stuck between the road and the truck's bumper, and the woman had to be cut free. The spokesman for emergency services said it was a miracle she had survived. On arrival at the hospital the woman was in very critical condition, and it was twenty-four hours before she was out of serious danger. Her eyes were so badly damaged that she lost her sight. Her name was Lucca. Lucca Montale. Despite the name there was nothing particularly Italian about her appearance. She had auburn hair and green eyes in a narrow face with high cheek-bones. She was slim and fairly tall. It turned o ~ Jens Christian Grøndahl

The best way to get over a man is to get under an Italian. ~ Kresley Cole

Devo farmi le ossa is how they say it in Italian. I need to make my bones. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I feel Italian, but I also feel French," she said. "Italy is deeper. France is strong, but it's after." Actually, one of the surprises about meeting [Valeria Bruni Tedeschi] is how Italian she seems. Though she has no trace of an Italian accent when speaking French - and says that, in Italian, she shows signs of having lived in France - she sounds Italian when speaking English. There is no suggestion of French at all. ~ Mick LaSalle

I wish more Italian literature were translated and read in English. I've discovered so many extraordinary and diverse writers: Lalla Romano, Carlo Cassola. Beppe Fenoglio, Giorgio Manganelli, just to name a few. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

I speak African. I can even speak Italian. ~ Frank Bruno

[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers. ~ Madame De Stael

Even French pilferage has not relegated Italian culinary genius to the darker corners of gastronomy. Marie de' Medici brought Italian cookery to France, where Gallic duplicity quickly undermined the integrity of good ingredients with unctuous sauces. The French will always confuse egregious decorative effects with creative integrity. They have a genius for appearances. Trompe l'oeil will do for a Frenchman, but not for an Italian. ~ Roland Delicio

Glancing round to see that no one was watching, I sniffed at it. The leather binding, soft and supple, was pungent, but it was the pages that interested me. They smelt nourishing, like new-baked bread ~ Linda Proud

The peoples of Yugoslavia do not want Fascism. They do not want a totalitarian regime, they do not want to become slaves of the German and Italian financial oligarchy as they never wanted to become reconciled to the semi-colonial dependence imposed on them by the so-called Western democracies after the first imperialist war. ~ Josip Broz Tito

Caitlyn, s'il vous plait!" Madame said, whacking the blackboard with her stick, its end pointing to the irregular verb devoir, "to have to." She
wanted Caitlyn to conjugate it.
Caitlyn felt the class's attention turn to her, and a clammy sweat broke out in her armpits. Her brain stopped in its tracks, unable to move under
the pressure. A vague sense of having known how to speak French in her dreams tickled at her brain, but the skill was as lost to her in the waking
world as was Raphael.
"Devoir," Caitlyn croaked. "Er. Je dev? Tu dev?"
Madame gaped at her, horrified.
Caitlyn shook her head; she knew those words were wrong. "Er … I mean, uh …" And then out of nowhere came, "Egli deve, lei dovrebbe …"
These words felt right. He must, she must …
Several girls burst into laughter.
"What?" Caitlyn demanded.
"You're speaking Italian!" one girl shrieked, and collapsed into hysterical giggles. ~ Lisa Cach

Whiteness is not a culture. There is Irish culture and Italian culture and American culture - the latter, as Albert Murray pointed out, a mixture of the Yankee, the Indian, and the Negro (with a pinch of ethnic salt); there is youth culture and drug culture and queer culture; but there is no such thing as white culture. Whiteness has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with social position. It is nothing but a reflection of privilege, and exists for no reason other than to defend it. Without the privileges attached to it, the white race would not exist, and the white skin would have no more social significance than big feet. ~ Noel Ignatiev

In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good. ~ David Sedaris

Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian Tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in one of them. ~ Oscar Wilde

Always, I liked the infinitive 'to go.' Let's go, let's go. let's really go. 'Andare' was the first verb I learned to conjugate in Italian. 'Andiamo,' let's go, teh sound comes out at a gallop. ~ Frances Mayes

I cook Italian, Thai and Vietnamese, I've always liked to cook. ~ Robert Cray

One thing they don't have out here in California is Rita's Italian Ices. We used to have one right next to our house and it was so good! ~ Joe Jonas

He's rumored to have more bravery than sense."
"Then he and Gabe make a good pair," Oliver growled.
"Lay off of him, will you?" Jarret told Oliver. Closest to being a blend of their parents, he had black hair but blue-green eyes and no trace of Oliver's Italian features. "You've been ragging him ever since that stupid carriage race. He was drunk. It's a state you ought to be familiar with."
Oliver whirled on Jarret. "Yes, but you were not drunk, yet you let him-"
"Don't blame Jarret," Gabe put in. "Chetwin challenged me to it. He would have branded me a coward if I'd refused."
"Better a coward than dead." Oliver had no tolerance for such idiocy. Nothing was worth risking one's life for-not a woman, not honor, and certainly not reputation. A pity that he hadn't yet impressed that upon his idiot brothers.
Gabe, of all people, ought to know better. The course he'd run was the most dangerous in London. Two large boulders flanked the path so closely that only one rig could pass between them, forcing a driver to fall back at the last minute to avoid being dashed on the rocks. Many was the time drivers pulled out too late.
The sporting set called it "threading the needle." Oliver called it madness. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

The brevity of mini (psycho)therapies is another efficient forestaller of healing. The neocortex rapidly master didactic information, but the limbic brain takes mountains of repetition. No one expects to play the flute in six lessons or to become fluent in Italian in ten. (189) ~ Thomas Lewis

You should read Spanish,' he said. 'It is a noble tongue. It has not the mellifluousness of Italian
Italian is the language of tenors and organ-grinders
but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like a brook in a garden, but it surges tumultuous like a mighty river in a flood. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

I pursue my case, Monsieur, I speak English, Italian and German, and I want justice in all three languages. I have been damaged by unlove. It makes at inappropriate moments when I should be dignified. ~ Deborah Levy

Scamorza, an Italian curd cheese often labelled 'smoked mozzarella,' melts fantastically well. ~ Yotam Ottolenghi

A sad Italian history of corruption by local leaders and exploitation by foreign dominators, all of which has generally led Italians to draw the seemingly accurate conclusion that nobody and nothing in this world can be trusted. Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I drink a lot. More or less 10 or 12 coffees a day, both typical Italian and espresso. ~ Domenico Dolce

I was always pretty broad. I've had a couple bad experiences. One time, I showed up late for a gig in Brooklyn at an Italian restaurant. I ran on stage, did my show, and then some guy in the audience threatened to kill me because he didn't like my joke. Instead of talking to him, I just ran off stage. And then, because I was late, the owner of the restaurant threatened to kill me. And I was 19 years old and so scared that I almost started crying. But, I've done every gig you can imagine, in every state. ~ Nick Swardson

When I tell people I'm an Italian Jew, they're very amused by it. But obviously by blood I'm Jewish, because my mother is. ~ Antonio Sabato, Jr.

I'm a really good cook. I bake a lot. I cook dinner most nights. I cook everything from Italian food to Mexican food. But if I'm going to some place and it's a potluck, I'm always the one to bring dessert! ~ Amanda Schull

Consider a mug of American coffee. It is found everywhere. It can be made by anyone. It is cheap - and refills are free. Being largely without flavor, it can be diluted to taste. What it lacks in allure it makes up in size. It is the most democratic method ever devised for introducing caffeine into human beings. Now take a cup of Italian espresso. It requires expensive equipment. Price-to-volume ratio is outrageous, suggesting indifference to the consumer and ignorance of the market. The aesthetic satisfaction accessory to the beverage far outweighs its metabolic impact. It is not a drink; it is an artifact.

This contrast can stand for the differences between America and Europe - differences nowadays asserted with increased frequency and not a little acrimony on both sides of the Atlantic. The mutual criticisms are familiar. To American commentators Europe is 'stagnant.' Its workers, employers, and regulations lack the flexibility and adaptability of their U.S. counterparts. The costs of European social welfare payments and public services are 'unsustainable.' Europe's aging and 'cossetted' populations are underproductive and self-satisfied. In a globalized world, the 'European social model' is a doomed mirage. This conclusion is typically drawn even by 'liberal' American observers, who differ from conservative (and neoconservative) critics only in deriving no pleasure from it.

To a growing number of Europeans, however, it is America that is in trouble a ~ Tony Judt

Are you Italian?" Nico asked, putting
down his drink.

I looked up at him. "A quarter, and how
did you know that? I don't look it."

"You kind of do, plus you use a spoon like
Gina, that's the waitress, and she's half Italian."

I shrugged, having picked up the habit
from my nonna.

"What else are you?" he asked.

"I'm also a quarter Māori, part
French, Welsh, Danish, and English."

His eyes twinkled at me. "Add a few more
countries in there and you'll be a one-woman United Nations."

I smiled at that and lifted the pasta to
my mouth. Gina returned with Nico's plate of food, causing me to lower the fork
momentarily, making me wonder whether I should wait for him, but Gina started
asking him questions about university, so I took a bite. I shivered at the
delicious taste of garlic, the chef having put the perfect amount in, just how
my nonna would've made it.

The waitress disappeared as Nico picked up
his fork, twirling the spaghetti onto it without the aid of a spoon. "Looks
like you got the best parts out of all of those nationalities," he said.

I blushed at the compliment, always
embarrassed when people said nice things about my looks. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," he replied, popping the
spaghetti into his mouth, his unusual eyes once more twinkling at me, so bright
that I understood why his adop ~ Marita A. Hansen

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal.
The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments.
If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, to ~ Meredith Mileti

I just really, really love food, so I don't have a favourite. But if I had to pick one to eat every day, it would be Italian. But I also love Chinese and Japanese food. ~ Daniel Humm

When I [first] went to university, I was doing foreign languages, because I had done them since I was 13 years old. I had done French and German. I picked up Italian, just sort of blasted through the exams, [and then] took off overseas, because I wanted to be an actor. I thought, "I'm just not academic." I'm not very competitive, in terms of acting. But since going back to university, I've realized, I am highly competitive. ~ Nick Offerman

I have always heard that Italian women are rather fierce. ~ Susanna Clarke

a Sicilian grandma is a formidable opponent ~ Traci Andrighetti

Before the troops left Rome, the consul Varro made a number of extremely arrogant speeches. The nobles, he complained, were directly responsible for the war on Italian soil, and it would continue to prey upon the country's vitals if there were any more commanders on the Fabian model. He himself, on the contrary, would bring it to an end on the day he first caught sight of the enemy. His colleague Paullus spoke only once before the army marched, and in words which though true were hardly popular. His only harsh criticism of Varro was to express his surprise about how any army commander, while still at Rome, in his civilian clothes, could possibly know what his task on the field of battle would be, before he had become acquainted either with his own troops or the enemy's or had any idea of the lie and nature of the country where he was to operate--or how he could prophesy exactly when a pitched battle would occur. As for himself, he refused to recommend any sort of policy prematurely; for policy was moulded by circumstance, not circumstance by policy. . . . [T]o strengthen [Paullus'] determination Fabius (we are told) spoke to him at his departure in the following words.

'If, Lucius Aemilius, you were like your colleague, or if--which I should much prefer--you had a colleague like yourself, anything I could now say would be superfluous. Two good consuls would serve the country well in virtue of their own sense of honour, without any words from me; and two bad consuls ~ Livy

Even his highly emotional Italian mother didn't believe that true love could blossom overnight. Like his brothers and sisters-in-law, she wanted nothing more for him than to marry and start a family, but if he showed up at her doorstep and said that he'd met someone two days ago and knew she was the one for him, his mother would smack him with a broom, curse in Italian, and drag him to church, sure that he had some serious sins that needed confessing. ~ Nicholas Sparks

I'm Italian. I wouldn't know how to play a Jew. ~ Alex Rocco

The first time I went to Hollywood, I was 25 years old. My background was mostly Italian. ~ Isabella Rossellini

Some ancients speculated that the stars were small holes in a black sphere through which distant light shone through. The Italian astronomer Giordano Bruno suggested that they were instead objects like our Sun, just much farther away, perhaps with their own planets and civilizations - this didn't go down too well with the Catholic Church, which had him burned at the stake in 1600. ~ Max Tegmark

I paused for a light at Hamilton and TWlfth and noticed the Nissan was running rough at idle. Two blocks later it backfired and stalled. I coaxed it into the center of the city. Ffft, ffft, ffft, KAPOW! Ffft, ffft, ffft, KAPOW!
A Trans Am pulled up next to me at a light. The Trans Am was filled with high school kids. One of them stuck his head out of the passenger-side window.
"Hey lady," he said. "Sounds like you got a fartmobile." I flipped him an Italian goodwill gesture and pulled the ball cap low on my forehead.
(Three to get Deadly) ~ Janet Evanovich

The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

You try to come up with new ideas, but in the end, people just want to eat Italian food. ~ Stephen Starr

When I wasn't famous, I had a lot of friends, almost all of them Italian. The racism only started when I started to play football. ~ Mario Balotelli

The sleek, white Gulfstream jet cruised at forty thousand feet above the Tyrrhenian Sea west of the Italian mainland. The luxuriously-fitted and technologically-advanced aircraft showcased a cozy interior with windows that permitted ample sunlight to brighten the cabin. Though the plane could accommodate eighteen people, only one passenger was aboard the flight. ~ S.S. Segran

She would be a sparkling accent on his arm. She speaks flawless French and Italian, and has a limitless supply of charm when she wishes to dispense it. And'd she'll use him. She'll take, take more. If it was necessary, or if she simply had the whim, she'd toss him to the wolves to see who'd win."
He finished the whiskey. "You, Lieutenant, are often crude, you are certainly rude, and have very little sense of how to be the wife
in public
of a man in Roarke's position. And you would do anything, no matter what the personal risk, to keep him from harm. She will never love him. You will never do anything but. ~ J.D. Robb

I think the set looks great. It's kind of like Battlestar Galactica meets like the Italian furniture fair. ~ Thom Filicia

You have wavered uncertainly between two systems, between drawing and coloring, between the painstaking phlegm, the stiff precision, of the old German masters, and the dazzling ardor, the happy fertility, of the Italian painters. ~ Honore De Balzac

I've been singing my whole life, since I was a kid; but never formally as a career. I did it in plays when I was younger, and I sang all styles of music: everything from Italian opera to blues. ~ Brittany Murphy

Ian!" she cried, afraid to believe it. "I don't want you to ever regret that you married me."
He smiled, and his fingertips caressed her cheeks. "Regret it? How could I?" You are my passionate
Italian wife. You are the woman who is going to give me children and whose bed I intend to sleep in
every night. You're the reason I'll wake up every morning with a smile on my face. I love you, I will be in
love with you every day of my life, and the only day I'm leaving you is the day they put me in the ground. ~ Laura Lee Guhrke

The truth is, just to hear other people speaking Italian is really worth it. It keeps the sound in your ear. ~ Ann Goldstein

At one point Trudeau mentioned to me that the National Gallery wanted to buy a masterpiece by the great Italian painter Lotto, and it needed a million dollars from the Treasury Board. "Is that Lotto-Quebec or Lotto-Canada?" I joked, but I got the message, and the National Gallery got the painting. ~ Jean Chretien

The sun woke Tino early this beautiful morning in his small Italian village. ~ Tonya Russo Hamilton

That night a bomb exploded in the Corleone Family mall in Long Beach, thrown from a car that pulled up to the chain, then roared away. That night also two button men of the Corleone Family were killed as they peaceably ate their dinner in a small Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. The Five Families War of 1946 had begun. ~ Mario Puzo

I'm half italian"
"Which half" asked Tessa
"From the waist down ~ Pamela Clare

I once found myself conspiring with a British Cabinet Minister as to how we might persuade Her Majesty's Treasury to cough up more money for the British Travel advertising in America. Said he, "Why does any American in his senses spend his vacation in the cold damp of an English summer when he could equally well bask under Italian skies? I can only suppose that your advertising is the answer." Damn right. ~ David Ogilvy

Sumire was a hopeless romantic, a bit set in her ways - innocent of the ways of the world, to put a nice spin on it. Start her talking and she'd go on nonstop, but if she was with someone she didn't get along with - most people in the world, in other words - she barely opened her mouth. She smoked too much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time she took the train. She'd get so engrossed in her thoughts at times she'd forget to eat, and she was as thin as one of those war orphans in an old Italian film - like a stick with eyes. I'd love to show you a photo of her but I don't have any. She hated having her photograph taken - no desire to leave behind for posterity a Portrait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)Man. ~ Haruki Murakami

I'm half-Italian and my name is Portuguese. Michael Young is half-Mexican. There are players from the United States that have heritage elsewhere and it's a great thing to have a world cup to celebrate the whole world. It shows the world that baseball is important and how great the game is. ~ Mark Teixeira

There is an Italian proverb which saith, From my enemy let me defend myself; but from a pretensed friend Lord deliver me ~ Elizabeth I

Tampa's Latin quarter, Ybor City. Ybor had been the Cuban-Italian core when Tampa was Cigar City USA. ~ Tim Dorsey

One of the string theory pioneers, the Italian physicist Daniele Amati, characterized it as "part of the 21st century that fell by chance into the 20th century." Indeed, there is something about the very nature of the theory at present that points to the fact that we are witnessing the theory's baby steps. Recall the lesson learned from all the great ideas since Einstein's relativity-put the symmetry first. Symmetry originates the forces. The equivalence principle-the expectation that all observers, irrespective of their motions, would deduce the same laws-requires the existence of gravity. The gauge symmetries-the fact that the laws do not distinguish color, or electrons from neutrinos-dictate the existence of the messengers of the strong and electroweak forces. Yet supersymmetry is an output of string theory, a consequence of its structure rather than a source for its existence. What does this mean? Many string theorists believe that some underlying grander principle, which will necessitate the existence of string theory, is still to be found. If history is to repeat itself, then this principle may turn out to involve an all-encompassing and even more compelling symmetry, but at the moment no one has a clue what this principle might be. Since, however, we are only at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Amati's characterization may still turn out to be an astonishing prophecy. ~ Mario Livio

What I remember most about those days is how happy we all were. When I think back on my life growing up on Terra d'Amore, tides of warm memories wash over me like the waves of the Mediterranean. Our little farm, nestled in the hills and valleys of Montecalvo just outside Bologna, was idyllic. Indeed, it was an Italian paradise...a veritable heaven. ~ Giacomino Nicolazzo

I'm mixed on figs. The fleshy quality feels spooky. In Italian, il fico, fig, has a slangy turn into la fica, meaning vulva. Possibly because of the famous fig leaf exodus from Eden, it seems like the most ancient of fruits. Oddest, too - the fig flower is inside the fruit. To pull one open is to look into a complex, primitive, infinitely sophisticated life cycle tableau. ~ Frances Mayes

The Sparrow Sisters' roses still bloomed on New Year's Day, their scent rich and warm even when snow weighted their petals closed. When customers came down the rutted road to the small eighteenth-century barn where the sisters worked, they marveled at the jasmine that twined through the split-rail fence, the perfume so intense they could feel it in their mouths. As they paid for their purchases, they wondered (vaguely, it must be said, for the people of Granite Point knew not to think too hard about the Sisters) how it was that clematis and honeysuckle climbed the barn in November and the morning glories bloomed all day. The fruit trees were so fecund that the peaches hung on the low branches, surrounded by more blossoms, apples and pears ripened in June and stayed sweet and fresh into December. Their Italian fig trees were heavy with purple teardrop fruit only weeks after they were planted. If you wanted a tomato so ripe the juice seemed to move beneath the skin, you needed only to pick up a punnet at the Nursery. ~ Ellen Herrick

You catch any white man off guard in here right now, you catch him off guard and ask him what he is, he doesn't say he's an American. He either tells you he's Irish, or he's Italian, or he's German, if you catch him off guard and he doesn't know what you're up to. And even though he was born here, he'll tell you he's Italian. Well, if he's Italian, you and I are African even though we were born here. ~ Malcolm X

I like a lot of food. I like Taiwanese food, of course. I like baguettes, especially the ones that my dad buys. Vancouver has a lot of variety, with pizza, hot dogs, Italian, Indian, seafood - a great combination of culture. ~ Godfrey Gao

The Prelude to Tristan and Isolde reminds me of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel. ~ Eduard Hanslick

I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like? ~ Al Pacino

Early in my career, people wanted to pigeonhole me as the bad guy because I'm of Italian-American descent, which they often were when I started out. You have to fight against it. One of the things that helps is the ability to do comedy. ~ Stanley Tucci

I'm Italian and we curse a lot when we talk. ~ Lea Michele

Sometimes a name seems our most arbitrary possession,
and sometimes it seems like the grain in a rock
like a sculptor's hunk of Italian marble: Whack it
and you might get either your first glimpse of a saint
or a pile of rubble. ~ Lucia Perillo

The Communists at that moment were very strong in Italy, and the Italian Communist Party was the biggest Communist Party outside the Soviet Union. ~ Giovanni Agnelli

Yes, I'm half Italian. So my grandfather speaks heavy Italian ... and I couldn't understand a word he said. ~ Paulo Costanzo

There's nothing more romantic than Italian food. ~ Elisha Cuthbert

A major push is under way to figure out the molecular basis of those "critical" or "sensitive" periods, to figure out how the brain changes as certain learning abilities come and go. In some, if not all, of those mammals that have the alternating stripes in the visual cortex known as ocular dominance columns, those columns can be adjusted early in development, but not in adulthood. A juvenile monkey that has one eye covered for an extended period of time can gradually readjust its brain wiring to favor the open eye; an adult monkey cannot adjust its wiring. At the end of a critical period, a set of sticky sugar-protein hybrids known as proteoglycans condenses into a tight net around the dendrites and cell bodies of some of the relevant neurons, and in so doing those proteoglycans appear to impede axons that would otherwise be wriggling around as part of the process of readjusting the ocular dominance columns; no wriggling, no learning. In a 2002 study with rats, Italian neuroscientist Tommaso Pizzorusso and his colleagues dissolved the excess proteoglycans with an antiproteoglycan enzyme known as "chABC," and in so doing managed to reopen the critical period. After the chABC treatment, even adult rats could recalibrate their ocular dominance columns. ChABC probably won't help us learn second languages anytime soon, but its antiproteoglycan function may have important medical implications in the not-too-distant future. Another 2002 study, also with rats, showed that chABC can ~ Gary F. Marcus

All of my youth growing up in my Italian family was focused around the table. That's where I learned about love. ~ Leo Buscaglia

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills - against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. ~ Robert F. Kennedy

Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,
not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us
the Irish! ~ Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

Maybe it's just not the right time for us to be married. I don't want to be a bounty hunter for the rest of my life, but I certainly don't want to be a housewife right now. And I really don't want to be married to someone who gives me ultimatums.
And maybe Joe needs to examine what he wants from a wife. He was raised in a traditional Italian household with a stay-at-home mother and domineering father. If he wants a wife who will fit into that mold, I'm not for him. I might be a stay-at-home mother someday, but I'll always be trying to fly off the garage roof. That's just who I am. ~ Janet Evanovich

In foreign countries such as Italy, the government puts strict-looking speed limit signs everywhere, but nobody ever sees them because light does not travel fast enough to catch the Italian drivers. ~ Dave Barry

What fascinated me about English was what I later recognized as its hybrid etymoogy: blunt Anglo-Saxon concreteness, sleek Norman French urbanity, and polysyllabic Greco-Roman abstraction. The clash of these elements, as competitive as Italian dialects is invigorating, richly entertaining, and often funny, as it is to Shaskespeare, who gets tremendous effects out of their interplay. The dazzling multiplicity of sounds and word choices in English makes it brilliantly suited to be a language of poetry.. ~ Camille Paglia

DiMaggio's grace came to represent more than athletic skill in those years. To the men who wrote about the game, it was a talisman, a touchstone, a symbol of the limitless potential of the human individual. That an Italian immigrant, a fisherman's son, could catch fly balls the way Keats wrote poetry or Beethoven wrote sonatas was more than just a popular marvel. It was proof positive that democracy was real. On the baseball diamond, if nowhere else, America was truly a classless society. DiMaggio's grace embodied the democracy of our dreams. ~ David Halberstam

A fool and his money are soon invited everywhere. ~ Warren Buffett

I felt for the tormented whirlwinds
Damned for their carnal sins
Committed when they let their passions rule their reason. ~ Dante Alighieri

The crew, like all Italian crews, was generous, warm, and enthusiastic. ~ Barbara Steele