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1 " The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.’ He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on. "
― Hilary Mantel , Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
2 " Durum semolina, golden wheat wafting in Italian fields. Can you imagine how astonished the Italians would be if they knew that what they were exporting in 1971 was really loneliness "
3 " Vegetables cooked for salads should always be on the crisp side, like those trays of zucchini and slender green beans and cauliflowerets in every trattoria in Venice, in the days when the Italians could eat correctly. You used to choose the things you wanted: there were tiny potatoes in their skins, remember, and artichokes boiled in olive oil, as big as your thumb, and much tenderer...and then the waiter would throw them all into an ugly white bowl and splash a little oil and vinegar over them, and you would have a salad as fresh and tonic to your several senses as La Primavera. It can still be done, although never in the same typhoidic and enraptured air. You can still find little fresh vegetables, and still know how to cook them until they are not quite done, and chill them, and eat them in a bowl. "
― M.F.K. Fisher , How to Cook a Wolf
4 " Lucifer sharpened his gaze and focused on Ajax. “Yes… I want you to drive over to New Jersey, load those two corpses into your car and take them back to the Italians… personally”“In my car?”“They haven’t been in the water more than a week, Ajax.”“But actually… inside?”“Well,” Lucifer’s patience was fading, “If you tie them to the fenders like you’re coming back from Deer Camp, the Italians might not find you quite as endearing…”--Lucifer and Ajax from The Ragtime Coven "
― Bruce Jenvey ,
5 " Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets. "
― Gregory David Roberts , Shantaram
6 " Some anthems are great for sports. You've got the Russian national anthem... 'O Canada,' how wonderful is that for hockey... but I chose the Italian national song because at my first World Cup, I saw the Italians play four times, and they won all four times - they won the championship. "
7 " The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery. "