I raised my hand and asked if God was a spirit. And he said yes, He was. So I asked if it was right that a spirit was different from a person because it didn't have a body, wasn't material. And when h...
I came to Venice for the first time in 1968 and was lucky enough to make the acquaintanceship, and then the friendship, of two Venetians, Roberta and Franco, who remain my best friends here after almo...
If you put people on a diet, they start thinking about food. Or if you make someone stop smoking, all they think about is cigarettes. It seems logical enough to me that if you tell a person he can't h...
Where does American money come from? Steel. Railways. You know how it is over there. It doesn’t matter if you murder or rob to get it. The trick is in keeping it for a hundred years, and then you’re a...
Love trumped principle. Paola tossed out these things
Most people — however much they might deny it — had an idea of what they were getting into when they got into it.
And will knowing what she reads make you know who she is?Can you think of a better way to tell?
She stood motionless like that for
With renewing his offer of
Patta would have fallen upon these details as a beast upon prey and torn into them in an attempt to find nourishment.
As if sensing his attention, Paola turned her head towards him and allowed her eyes to close and then open slowly, as though she’d been told that the Crucifixion had only just begun and there still re...
And I don't want to live anywhere where I am famous. It makes me very, very uncomfortable, because it conveys an advantage over people, and I don't like that.
We are a nation of egoists. It is our glory, but it will be our destruction, for none of us can be made to concern ourselves about something as abstract as the common good. The best of us can rise to...
That first time, we talked about the servant, who had influenza, but when I came back, we somehow started to talk about Greek poetry. And that led to a discussion, if I remember correctly, of Greek an...
Once, walking with him, Paola had stopped and asked him what he was thinking about, and the fact that she was the only person in the world he would not be embarrassed to tell just what it was he had b...
He hesitated then, anticipating the panic that came when there was nothing left to read.- Guido Brunetti
Brunetti’s best friend had often said that he wanted death to take him just at the moment he laid his last lira down on a bar and said, ‘Prosecco for everyone.
When children loved you, you knew everything, and when they were angry with you, you knew nothing?
But all that you will have now, and for the rest of your lives, is loss and pain and the terrible sense that you somehow failed this boy. And no matter how deep your knowledge that you were not respon...
You really love to gossip, don't you? he asked, wishing she had brought him a glass of wine.Yes, I suppose I do, she answered, sounding surprised at the realization. You think that's why I love readin...