Leonardo Sciascia Quotes & Sayings

It's like squeezing tripe: nothing comes out,' he said, meaning the Colasberna brothers, their partners, the town in general and Sicily as a whole. — Leonardo Sciascia

All of Sicily is a dimension of the imagination. — Leonardo Sciascia

There's a proverb, a maxim, that runs, 'The dead man is dead; let's give a hand to the living.' Now, you say that to a man from the North, and he visualizes the scene of an accident with one dead and one injured man; it's reasonable to let the dead man be and to set about saving the injured man. But a Sicilian visualizes a murdered man and his murderer, and the living man who's to be helped is the murderer. — Leonardo Sciascia

Reality is always richer, more unpredictable than our deductions — Leonardo Sciascia

Scientists say that the palm tree line, that is the climate suitable to growth of the palm, is moving north, five hundred metres, I think it was, every year ... The palm tree line ... I call it the coffee line, the strong black coffee line ... It's rising like mercury in a thermometer, this palm tree line, this strong coffee line, this scandal line, rising up throughout Italy and already passed Rome ... — Leonardo Sciascia

I hate and detest Sicily in so far as I love it, and in so far as it does not respond to the kind of love I would like to have for it. — Leonardo Sciascia

... And the sound of the sea, like the wild-animal breath of the world itself, frightened them as it gasped and died at their feet. — Leonardo Sciascia

Dear Commendatory Roomers, you have no idea how many people-serious, decently behaved, cultivated people- go looking for the company of whores — Leonardo Sciascia

Translation is the other side of a tapestry. — Leonardo Sciascia

The only institution in the Sicilian conscience that really counts is the family; counts, that is to say, more as a dramatic juridical contract or bond than as a natural association based on affection. The family is the Sicilians' State. The State, as it is for us, is extraneous to them, merely a de facto entity based on force; an entity imposing taxes, military service, war, police. Within the family institution the Sicilian can cross the frontier of his own natural tragic solitude and fit into a communal life where relationships are governed by hair-splitting contractual ties. To ask him to cross the frontier between family and State would be too much. In imagination he may be carried away by the idea of the State and may even rise to being Prime Minister; but the precise and definite code of his rights and duties will remain within the family, whence the step towards victorious solitude is shorter. — Leonardo Sciascia

Maybe the whole of italy is becoming a sort of Sicily. — Leonardo Sciascia

The truth is at the bottom of a well. You look in a well, and you see the sun or the moon, but if you jump in, there's no longer the sun or the moon; there's the truth. Leonardo Sciascia — Leonardo Sciascia

A sort of melancholy, and regret, seizes us every time we meet a sophisticated, adulterated idiot. Oh the nice fools of yestertime! Genuine, natural. Like homemade bread. — Leonardo Sciascia