Andrea Camilleri Quotes & Sayings

Wearing glasses for reading meant surrendering to old age without the least bit of a fight. — Andrea Camilleri

The memory of the aged becomes clearer and clearer with time. It has no pity. — Andrea Camilleri

No matter what they do, our elected representatives don't give a fuck anymore about public opinion! They take drugs, frequent whores, rob, steal, cheat, sell themselves, commit perjury, make deals with the Mafia, and what happens to them? The newspapers talk about it for, oh, three days maybe? Then everybody forgets about it. But you - you who exposed the scandal, they won't forget about you, nosirree, you can count on that, and they'll make you pay for it. — Andrea Camilleri

But then why, when talking on the phone, did they quarrel, on average at least once every four sentences? Maybe, though the inspector, it was an effect of the distance between them becoming less and less tolerable with each passing day, since as we grow old - for every now and then one must, yes, look reality in the eye and call things by their proper names - we feel more keenly the need to have the person we love beside us. — Andrea Camilleri

What do two women friends usually do when they see each other? We talked, we watched television, we listened to music Sometimes we did nothing at all. It was a pleasure just to know the other one was there. — Andrea Camilleri

From the pit of his stomach a violent spasm of nausea rose up and seized his throat. He ran to the bathroom, barely able to stand, knelt down in front of the toilet and started to vomit. He vomited the whiskey he'd just drunk, vomited what he'd eaten that day as well as what he'd eaten the day before, and the day before that, and he felt, with his sweaty head now entirely inside the toilet bowl and a sharp pain in his side, as if he were endlessly vomiting up the entire time of his life on earth, going all the way back to the pap he was given as a baby, and when, at last, he'd expelled his own mother's milk, he kept vomiting poison bitterness, bile, pure hatred. — Andrea Camilleri

Montalbano felt moved. This was real friendship, Sicilian friendship, the kind based on intuition, on what was left unsaid. With a true friend, one never needs to ask, because the other understands on his own accordingly. — Andrea Camilleri

He swam and he wept. — Andrea Camilleri

And they have the gall to call it a law for public safety! We've got no cars, no gasoline, no guns, no men . . . It's clear they're determined to promote criminality. Enough. What can we do?" "If — Andrea Camilleri

And in our dark days, with so many threatening clouds on the horizon, he concluded, we puff up a story like this to drug people, to distract their
attention from the serious problems and
divert them with a Romeo-and-Juliet
story, one scripted, however, by a soap opera writer. — Andrea Camilleri

Getting seasick?" the inspector asked him at one point.
"No. Just sick of myself."
"Why?"
"Because every now and then I realize what a stupid shit I am to go along with some of your brilliant ideas. — Andrea Camilleri

He also remembered a comedy he had read in his youth called "The Deluge", which claimed the next great flood would be caused not by water from the heavens but by the backing up and over flowing of all the toilets, latrines, cesspools and septic tanks in the world which would start chucking up their contents relentlessly until we all drowned in our own shit. — Andrea Camilleri

To distract himself, he formulated a proposition. A philosophical proposition? Maybe, but tending towards "weak thought"
exhausted thought, in fact. He even gave this proposition a title: "The Civilization of Today and the Ceremony of Access." What did it mean? It meant that, today, to enter any place whatsoever
an airport, a bank, a jeweler's or watchmaker's shop
you had to submit to a specific ceremony of control. Why ceremony? Because it served no concrete purpose. A thief, a hijacker, a terrorist
if they really want to enter
will find a way. The ceremony doesn't even serve to protect the people on the other side of the entrance. So whom does it serve? It serves the very person about to enter, to make him think that, once inside, he can feel safe. — Andrea Camilleri

Giulio was against our meeting. He didn't want me getting mixed up in things that, in his opinion, were no concern of mine. For decades the respectable people here did nothing but repeat that the Mafia was no concern of theirs but only involved the people involved in it. But I used to teach my pupils that the see-nothing, know-nothing attitude is the most mortal of sins. So now that its my turn to tell what I saw, I'm supposed to take a step back? — Andrea Camilleri

The inspector sat down on a stair, fired up a cigarette, and entered an immobility contest with a lizard. — Andrea Camilleri

In grammar school he'd had an old priest as his religion teacher. "Truth is light," the priest had said one day.
Montalbano, never very studious, had been a mischievous pupil, always sitting in the last row.
"So that must mean that if everyone in the family tells the truth, they save on the electric bill. — Andrea Camilleri

Unwell? I was fine, as good as one might feel in such circumstances. No, my friend, I merely pretended to faint. I'm a good actress. Actually, a thought had come into my mind: if a terrorist, I said to myself, were to blow up this church with all of us inside, at least one-tenth of all the hypocrisy in the world would disappear with us. So I had myself escorted out. — Andrea Camilleri

In moments of crisis, all you gotta do is review your multiplication tables, and it'll all blow over! — Andrea Camilleri

The Inspector stood up. Worried. Fonso Spalato fell silent.
'What's wrong?' he said, ready to jump out of his chair and start running.
'Do you mind if I whinny again?' the inspector politely asked — Andrea Camilleri

uncomfortable like this,' the — Andrea Camilleri

Nowadays, if a man living in a civilized country (ha!) hears cannon blasts in his sleep, he will, of course, mistake them for thunderclaps, gun salutes on the feast day of the local patron saint, or furniture being moved by the slime-buckets living upstairs, and go right on sleeping soundly. But the ringing of the telephone, the triumphal march of the cell phone, or the doorbell, no: Those are all sounds of summons in response to which the civilzed man (ha-ha!) has no choice but to surface from the depths of slumber and answer. — Andrea Camilleri

To judge from the entrance the dawn was making, it promised to be a very iffy day
that is, blasts of angry sunlight one minute, fits of freezing rain the next, all of it seasoned with sudden gusts of wind
one of those days when someone who is sensitive to abrupt shifts in weather and suffers them in his blood and brain is likely to change opinion and direction continuously, like those sheets of tin, cut in the shape of banners and roosters, that spin every which way on rooftops with each new puff of wind. — Andrea Camilleri

Sicily has suffered 13 foreign dominations from which she has taken both the best and the worst. The sequence of different cultures has made Sicily a fascinating place, quite unlike any other. — Andrea Camilleri

I had a little friend, a peasant boy, who was younger than me. I was about ten. One day I saw that my friend had put a bowl, a cup, a teapot and a square milk carton on the edge of a well, had filled them all with water, and was looking at them attentively. '"What are you doing?" I asked him. And he answered me with a question in turn. '"What shape is water?" '"Water doesn't have any shape!" I said, laughing. "It takes the shape you give it."' At — Andrea Camilleri

driver's side opened, and someone got in and sat down. He didn't turn to see who it was, because by this point he was unable to take his eyes off the hospital entrance. "I went to Marinella to look for you," said Fazio, "but you weren't there. Then I realized you'd be here, and so I came." Montalbano didn't answer. Half an hour later, he saw Garrufo come out, bent over, face in his hands, weeping. "Take me home," he said to Fazio. He leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes, at last. Click here for more books by this author. — Andrea Camilleri

You're eating without conviction, Inspector.' 'It's true. The fact is, I've got something on my mind.' 'The mind should be forgotten when the Lord in His grace puts such perches in front of you, — Andrea Camilleri

He was convinced he would keep his word. Not because he feared for his health, but because one cannot break a promise made to one's guardian angel. And he resumed the climb. — Andrea Camilleri

Sex standing up and walking on sand will bring any man to a bad end. He — Andrea Camilleri

Montalbano and Valente seemed not to have heard him, looking as if their minds were elsewhere. But in fact they were paying very close attention, like cats that, keeping their eyes closed as if asleep, are actually counting the stars. — Andrea Camilleri

A positive vision is what keeps us going despite the misfortunes and setbacks that fill our lives. The sole disadvantage is that it stops us to seeing evil. — Andrea Camilleri

And, pointing a trembling finger at Bonetti-Alderighi, with an expression of indignation and a quasi-castrato voice, he launched into the climax:
Ah, so you, Mr. Commissioner, actually believed such a groundless accusation? Ah, I feel so insulted and humiliated! You're accusing me of an act - no, indeed, a crime that, if true, would warrant a severe punishment! As if I were a common idiot or gambler! That journalist must be possessed to think of such a thing!
End of climax. The inspector inwardly congratulated himself. He had managed to utter a statement using only titles of novels by Dostoyevsky. Had the comissioner noticed? Of course not! The man was ignorant as a goat! — Andrea Camilleri