Sari Gilbert QUOTES

1 " [Italy is] A country where pleasure principle dominates. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

2 " ...here, just as everywhere else, many men are far from skilled Latin lovers that legend would have them. ... In some ways, of course, Italian men are different and in my opinion got - and deserve - their reputation because of their extreme warmth, actively affectionate nature and sentimental romanticism, not necessarily because of their sexual bravura. ... They also appear to be less “generous” than men from some other countries. ... Italian men love being on the receiving end of oral sex but generally shy away from giving it. “Oh, there are a few older guys who like it,” says one male friend, “but most men think it’s kind of icky. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

3 " When you meet someone at a time when you are still basically unfamiliar with the country he or she finds from, you are unable to make all those subtle distinctions you unconsciously rely on at home - accent, pronunciation, mode of dress, physical bearing - to give you what is often vital information about a new acquaintance. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

4 " Italian men like them [Eastern European women immigrants], several of the latter have told me, because they are more feminine and not 'feminists'. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

5 " ...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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

6 " 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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

7 " In Rome, instead, it is clear: people know that most of the time they can get away, not with murder, of course, but with many other misdemeanors. The result? Ignoring the rules has become a quasi national habit. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

8 " 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”. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

9 " And while I agree - and who wouldn’t? - that being in Love is the optimum, I have learned that what we call love, or at least what I called love, was often only a ferocious physical attraction. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

10 " 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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

11 " But they {journalists} are still viewed as a rather privileged category. True, they no longer can ride buses free or go to the movies for free as was the case in Mussolini’s day. But they can still get into most museums or exhibitions without paying. If you’re a smooth operator you can get complimentary tickets for shows or the opera. Until recently, you could get a 30% discount on all domestic flights (now it’s 15%). And if you have trouble with any of your utilities,the utility company’s press office will be glad to give you a have in working things out. In addition, since many Italian journalists have a different sense of what constitutes a conflict of interest from what we do in the United States, they often accept any manner of gifts or paid vacations from companies they regularly cover. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

12 " It would appear that the gene for organization and precision is truly missing from the Italian DNA. Some people find it charming but I, increasingly, do not. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

13 " 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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

14 " 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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

15 " 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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

16 " 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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

17 " ...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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

18 " 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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

19 " 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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City

20 " 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. "

― Sari Gilbert , My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City