Donna Leon Quotes & Sayings

She thanked me and said she was proud of me. But then she said that she said she hoped I'd seen how hard a person had to work when all the person had to work with was their body ... At first I didn't understand, but then I did. I'd worked all day. Well, it seemed like it had been all day to me, though I suppose it was only a few hours. And all I had for it was enough for her to buy some pasta, rice and maybe a piece of cheese. So I understood what she meant. If you work with only your body, all you'll do is work for enough to eat. Even then I knew I didn't want to spend my life like that. — Donna Leon

Helmut thought himself above common morality. Or perhaps he thought he'd managed to create his own, different from ours, better. — Donna Leon

Brunetti asked, surprised how painful he still found the thought of his mother. He had tried for the last year, with singular lack of success, to tell himself that his mother, that bright-spirited woman who had raised them and loved them with unqualified devotion, had moved off to some other place, where she waited, still quickwitted and eager to smile, for that befuddled shell that was her body to come and join her so that they could drift off together to a final peace. 'I — Donna Leon

Favors are always for ourselves. Especially when we ask for things for other people. — Donna Leon

Life had taught him to be profoundly suspicious of coincidence, and it had similarly taught him to view any seemingly random conjunction of events or persons as coincidence and thus be suspicious of that, as well. — Donna Leon

I'm involved with a baroque opera company here in Italy. I write some of their booklet material, comments on operas. I also write for some baroque opera festivals because this music is my real passion. — Donna Leon

Sit around the bars, talked to people, ate in the restaurants, and chatted with the old ladies on the street. Fishermen are pretty much that way. — Donna Leon

hard on a curve and lost control of the — Donna Leon

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 been thinking about at that moment convinced him, though a thousand things had already done so, that this was the woman he wanted to marry, had to marry, would marry. — Donna Leon

Brunetti shrugged. They believed him to be a member of the community of scholars...'Community of Scholars," she repeated , "It would make the chickens laugh — Donna Leon

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most liberal and illumined of the nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. — Donna Leon

People don't change,' she answered, voicing the wisdom Neapolitans had learned over centuries. 'If they suffer enough, they do,' Brunetti said, then quickly amended it to 'or can.' Brunetti's — Donna Leon

I find the idea of vigilante justice very attractive. I like the idea that the murderer decides that this person has gone too far, and nothing will happen to him unless she does something to stop him. — Donna Leon

We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them.
...
Long after he's dead, someone else will own those stupid little boxes, and then someone after him, just as someone owned them before he did. But no one ever thinks of that: objects survive us and go on living. It's stupid to believe we own them. And it's sinful for them to be so important. — Donna Leon

So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that. — Donna Leon

That's probably because they said a lot of other things, as well. — Donna Leon

Brunetti remembered when they found themselves with an excessive catch, they chose to give it away, rather than watch it rot. — Donna Leon

Roberta Marieschi — Donna Leon

Well, I don't believe it any more, none of it: I have no faith and I have no hope.' Though — Donna Leon

You know, Guido, at times I find it difficult to believe you do the sort of work you do. (Medical examiner's view of Commissario Guido Brunetti) — Donna Leon

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 aristocrats.' 'Is that so different from here?' Brunetti asked. 'Of course,' Padovani explained, smiling. 'Here we have to keep it five hundred years before we're aristocrats. And there's another difference. In Italy, you have to be well-dressed. In America, it's difficult to tell which are the millionaires and which are the servants. — Donna Leon

with renewing his offer of — Donna Leon

She lengthened her stride, aware at every step of how long she'd been sitting at a desk and how much her body rejoiced in this simple act of walking on the beach in the sun. — Donna Leon

I do not take any pleasure whatsoever in being a famous person. — Donna Leon

All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James. — Donna Leon

Why are other people's prejudices so strange, while our own are so thought-out and reasonable? — Donna Leon

the warmth and smell he associated with — Donna Leon

My father read 'The New York Times,' my mother did secretarial work, we had a dog, we had a garden, I had a brother. — Donna Leon

He looked down at the glass again. 'I care that these things happen, that we poison ourselves and our progeny, that we knowingly destroy our future, but I do not believe that there is anything - and I repeat, anything - that can be done to prevent it. 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 feeling concern for our families, but as a nation we are incapable of more.'

'I refuse to believe that.' Brunetti said.

'Your refusal to believe it,' the Count said with a smile that was almost tender, 'makes it no less true, Guido. — Donna Leon

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. — Donna Leon

Perception of personal danger very often set people on the path of virtue. — Donna Leon

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. — Donna Leon

I was extraordinarily lucky. I wrote a book because I wanted to see if I could write a mystery. Someone nagged me into sending it to a contest, which it won, after which I was offered a two-book contract, thus requiring the writing of a second book. — Donna Leon

In any other city in Italy, the fact that no one had seen or heard anything would be no more than an indication of their distrust of the police and a general unwillingness to help them. Here, however, where the people were generally law-abiding and most of the police themselves Venetians, it meant no more than that they had seen or heard nothing. If — Donna Leon

South.
'But no name?,
'No, Guido. But I'll keep — Donna Leon

I don't go to the movies because I don't like films. — Donna Leon

I think reading a translation is an act of faith. — Donna Leon

If anything, the spirit that drove him now was fiercer, but there was no denying the diminishing powers of his body. He — Donna Leon

Women don't use knives,' Griffoni answered, reciting it as though she were Euclid listing another axiom. Although he agreed with her, Brunetti was curious about the basis for her belief. 'You offering proof of that?' 'Kitchens,' she said laconically. 'Kitchens?' 'The knives are kept in the kitchen, and their husbands pass through there every day, countless times, yet very few of them get stabbed. That's because women don't use knives, and they don't stab people. — Donna Leon

She became his Ariadne, leading him through the labyrinth of books, stopping now and then to pass another one to him. — Donna Leon

I listen to Handel's vocal music, almost exclusively. — Donna Leon

The character I created, 'Commissario Brunetti,' who appears in all my books, shares similar reading, artistic and musical tastes with me. Subconsciously, I knew that if I was to spend however long it would take to write this book with him, this man would have to be someone I'd like to have dinner with. — Donna Leon

Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it. — Donna Leon

A man in whom violence boiled below the surface in much the same way that fresh-poured polenta waited for the chance to burn the mouth of anyone who tried to eat it. — Donna Leon

Most people - however much they might deny it - had an idea of what they were getting into when they got into it. — Donna Leon

A story begins and it always passes from the subjunctive to the declarative. And Italians don't seem to care about making a fine distinction between that which is speculation and that which is fact. — Donna Leon

This is a fallen world. People lie, the truth gets distorted, and that's the way it is. What's for dinner ? — Donna Leon

when children loved you, you knew everything, and when they were angry with you, you knew nothing? — Donna Leon

Belief that heresy was a form of intellectual stubbornness, the refusal to abandon a mistaken idea. In — Donna Leon

Guilo, although a lawyer, never lied; at least not to his friends. — Donna Leon

Lampedusa had it right - things had to seem to change so that things could remain the same. — Donna Leon

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 he agreed, I asked how, if God was a spirit, He could be a man, if He didn't have a body or anything. — Donna Leon

And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction. — Donna Leon

His clothing marked him as Italian. The cadence of his speech announced that he was Venetian. His eyes were all policeman. — Donna Leon

At one point, Paola expressed a wish and used the subjunctive, and Brunetti felt himself close to tears at the beauty of the intellectual complexity of it: she could speak about what was not, could invent an alternative reality. He — Donna Leon

Though he did not believe, he was not untouched by the magic of belief ... — Donna Leon

Vianello had the knack of getting people to talk. Especially if they were Venetians, the people he interviewed invariably warmed to this large, sweet-tempered man who gave every appearance of speaking Italian reluctantly, who was only too glad to lapse into their common dialect, a linguistic change that often carried its speakers along to unconscious revelation. — Donna Leon

And will knowing what she reads make you know who she is?"
"Can you think of a better way to tell? — Donna Leon

F 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 have sex, he's going to be obsessive about the subject. Then to give him the power to tell other people how to run their sex lives, well, that's just asking for trouble. In a way, it's like having a blind person teach Art History, isn't it? — Donna Leon

I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book. — Donna Leon

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 remained a number of nails. The — Donna Leon

Italians tend to be less rigidly moral and law-abiding than do Anglo-Saxons. They also have a profound suspicion of the state and most of its agencies. — Donna Leon

For reasons he had never understood, she read a different newspaper each morning, spanning the political spectrum from right to left, and languages from French to English. Years ago, when he had first met her and understood her even less, he had asked about this. Her response, he came to realize only years later, made perfect sense: 'I want to see how many different ways the same lies can be told.' Nothing he had read in the ensuing years had come close to suggesting that her approach was wrong. — Donna Leon

How beautiful, the grace of women; how soft their charity. — Donna Leon

And that, Brunetti realized, was beginning to interest him a great deal, for the answer to his death must lie there, as it always did. Santore — Donna Leon

Logic was my favorite class in school. I like it because it's a way to see HOW what someone says is nonsense. — Donna Leon

I've been thinking that of late - she said. - Thinking what? - That the world of Henry James is becoming very small for me. — Donna Leon

I think people prefer to remember happy times, well, happier times, and if they can't remember them, then to change the memories and make them happier. — Donna Leon

Both of them had always taken delight in this most wonderful of holdovers from the academic Stone Age, the fact that the rector of the university was addressed as "Il Magnifico Rettore," the only thing Brunetti had learned in twenty years on the fringes of the university that had managed to make academic life sound interesting to him. — Donna Leon

I never wanted to be rich or successful or famous. I just wanted to be happy and have fun. — Donna Leon

Brunetti had long been of the opinion that one of the handicaps of stupidity was its inability to imagine intelligence. — Donna Leon

I've always liked it about the Greeks that they kept the violence off the stage. — Donna Leon

When scores of indicted criminals sit in parliament who could believe in the rule of law ... — Donna Leon

I guess God can be whatever God wants to be. Maybe God's so great that even our little rules about material reality and our tiny little universe don't mean anything to God. You ever think of that? — Donna Leon

She stood motionless like that for — Donna Leon

The ending is one of my blackest, utterly without hope of any sort. — Donna Leon

I have no memory for what happens in what books. I don't know when I might remember a scene, but beats me what book it's in because there are 14 of them now. — Donna Leon

Her mask gave no sign of how this affected her. — Donna Leon

Why bother to put the boy who broke into a house in jail when the man who stole billions from the health system is named ambassador to the country to which he had been sending the money for years? — Donna Leon

She believed that books served as a mirror of the person who accumulated them. — Donna Leon

Love trumped principle. Paola tossed out these things — Donna Leon

A man without a sense of fashion is a man without a soul. — Donna Leon

I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline. — Donna Leon

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 reading novels so much? — Donna Leon

Hic scientia finit: Knowledge Stops Here. — Donna Leon

am, as an English poet says in an entirely different context, 'as free as the road, as loose as the wind.'" Brunetti — Donna Leon

They walked slowly, taking the shortest way, deliberately cutting through Campo delle Fava to avoid the crowds in Calle della Bissa. When they arrived at the foot of the Rialto bridge, they looked up at it, horrified. Anthill, termites, wasps. Ignoring these thoughts, they locked arms and started up, eyes on their feet and the area immediately in front of them. Up, up, up as feet descended towards them, but they ignored them and didn't stop. Up, up, up and across the top, shoving their way through the motionless people, deaf to their admiration. Then down, down, down, the momentum of their descent making them more formidable, They saw the feet of the people coming up towards them dance to the side at their approach, hardened their hearts to their protests, and plunged ahead. Then left and into the underpass, where they stopped, Brunetti's pulse raced and Paola leaned helpless on his arm.

"I can't stand it any more," Paola said and pressed her forehead against his shoulder. — Donna Leon

I just go to lunch. And I never know when something is going into the file and something is not. — Donna Leon

I admire Dickens beyond words. He is one of the greatest plotters of all times. Didn't have a clue about women, but he sure could plot. — Donna Leon

I remember that's the way he was before we came out here. But then it was as if we'd come to a magic country where people changed into the person you wanted them to be, and all of a sudden my father became quiet and patient and had time to read to me. — Donna Leon

I love music. But I've never owned a TV in my adult life, and I've never lived in a place with a television. — Donna Leon

If you work with only your body, all you'll do is work for enough to eat. — Donna Leon

The Germans and Austrians are very polite, the Swiss are very reserved and the Spanish usually kiss me. The Brits write me letters. — Donna Leon

I know you shouldn't spit in your own soup but I think most crime writing is like TV and doesn't make enormous demands on one's intellect. — Donna Leon

locked his fingers on the arm of his — Donna Leon

Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will — Donna Leon

He hesitated then, anticipating the panic that came when there was nothing left to read.
- Guido Brunetti — Donna Leon

Venetians feel affection and loyalty to their city, rather than to the Italian state. — Donna Leon

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 almost 50 years. — Donna Leon

I have always had a particular antagonism for the military. — Donna Leon