Best Sicilian Quotes & Sayings

It might be the white woman or man our son or daughter will marry and the white woman or man our grandson or granddaughter will marry, all of them wading into the future until one of our line claims to be Sicilian. Leave instructions: the granddaughter of our granddaughter shall be named Cicily. — Terrance Hayes

a Sicilian grandma is a formidable opponent — Traci Andrighetti

One encounters in the streets, late at night on the evenings of fetes, the most strange and bizarre passers-by. Do these nights of popular celebration cause ancient and forgotten avatars to stir in the depths of the human soul? This evening, in the movement of the sweaty and excited crowd, I am certain that I passed between the masks of the liberated Bythinians and encountered the courtesans of the Roman decadence.
There emerged, this evening, from that swarming esplanade of Des Invalides - amid the crackle of fireworks, the shooting stars, the stink of frying, the hiccuping of drunkards and the reeking atmosphere of menageries - the wild effusions of one of Nero's festivals.
It was like the odour of a May evening on the Basso-Porto of Naples. It was easy to believe that the faces in that crowd were Sicilian. — Jean Lorrain

I took acting and elocution lessons, to get rid of my Sicilian accent. — Maria Grazia Cucinotta

I love Italian food but that's too generic a term for what's available now: you have to narrow it down to Tuscan, Sicilian, and so on. — Lee Child

As my Sicilian grandfather used to say, you get more flies with honey than with vinegar, right? — Andrew Cuomo

My mother was a strong-willed and opinionated woman - a Sicilian! - and if she didn't like something, she'd let you know about it. So her undying support of her kids went a long way in proving to us that we were on the right path. — Marlo Thomas

I'm pretty Sicilian if I've been crossed. I don't seek revenge, but I never forget. And I make it hard to repair, which is not a great quality because if people held me to that standard, no one would be around me - ever. — Amy Adams

I've always been able to cook Italian food. That's in my blood because I'm half Sicilian. — Jen Lancaster

I mean, go figure. You prepare your home for an assault and you don't take zombies into consideration. I'd fallen victim to one of the other classic blunders, along with not getting involved in a land war in Asia and never going in against a Sicilian when death was on the line. — Jim Butcher

No Southern people ever seem to possess the energy of their Northern brothers, and in Sicily a dolce far niente life is much enjoyed. Time is no object. According to Pliny, Aristhomacus watched the life of the bee carefully for fifty-eight years, which is just the sort of work a Sicilian of to-day would like. — Alec-Tweedie

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

There are always a few bored audience members at an opera, especially by the time act four comes along. Those particular eyes would be wandering around the hall, searching for something, anything, interesting to watch. Those eyes would land on the little demon downstage right, unless they were distracted.
Right on cue, a large stage lamp broke free of its clamp in the rigging and swung on its cable into the back canvas. [ ... ]
On his way though the lobby minutes later, Artemis was highly amuse to overhear several audience members gushing over the unorthodox direction of the opera's final scene. The exploding lamp, muse one buff, was doubtless a metaphor for Norma's own falling star. But no, argued a second. The lamp was obviously a modernistic interpretation of the burning stake that Norma was about to face.
Or perhaps, thought Artemis as he pushed through the crowd to find a light Sicilian mist falling on his forehead, the exploding lamp was simply an exploding lamp. — Eoin Colfer

We forget everything: the books we read, the temples of Japan, the tombs of Luxor, the airline queues, our own foolishness. And so we gradually return to identifying happiness with elsewhere: twin rooms overlooking a harbour, a hilltop church boasting the remains of the Sicilian martyr St Agatha, a palm-fringed bungalow with complimentary evening buffet service. We recover an appetite for packing, hoping and screaming. We will need to go back and learn the important lessons of the airport all over again soon. — Anonymous

Never go up against a Sicilian when death, is on the line.....ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..........(thump) — Ned Vizzini

He's gaining on us," the Turk said. "That is also inconceivable," the Sicilian said. "Before I stole this boat we're in, I made many inquiries as to what was the fastest ship on all of Florin Channel and everyone agreed it was this one." "You're right," the Turk agreed, staring back. "He isn't gaining on us. He's just getting closer, that's all. — William Goldman

I grew up in the Lower East Side, an Italian American - more Sicilian, actually. — Martin Scorsese

No one could be following us yet?" the Spaniard asked. "No one," the Sicilian assured him. "It would be inconceivable." "Absolutely inconceivable?" "Absolutely, totally, and, in all other ways, inconceivable," the Sicilian reassured him. "Why do you ask? — William Goldman

Every lesson I learned as a kid was at the dinner table. Being Greek, Sicilian and Ruthenian - we are an emotional bunch. It is where we laughed, cried and yelled - but most importantly, where we bonded and connected. — Michael Symon

I asked one Sicilian if those buildings were made of cheap concrete and he said, Oh, no -this is very expensive concrete. In each batch, there are a few bodies of people who were killed by the Mafia, and that costs money. But it does make the concrete stronger to be reinforced with all those bones and teeth. — Elizabeth Gilbert

All Sicilian expression, even the most violent, is really wish fulfillment: our sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our laziness, our spiced and drugged sherbets, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is, for death again; our meditative air is that of a void wanting to scrutinize the enigmas of nirvana. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Had I not played the Sicilian with Black I could have saved myself the trouble of studying for more than 20 years all the more popular lines of this opening, which comprise probably more than 25 percent of all published opening theory! — Bent Larsen

The Japanese Mafia. Tell me something, Jason, you ever hear anyone describe our thing as 'The Sicilian Yakuza'? Huh? — Neal Stephenson

George H. W. Bush may be a World War II hero and New England Yankee blue blood, but he has the tear ducts of a Sicilian grandmother. — Christopher Buckley

There are still a lotta nice Sicilian boys in New Orleans. (A nonna's advice to a zitella.) — Traci Andrighetti

In the darkest hour of winter, when the starlings had all flown away, Gretel Samuelson fell in love. It happened the way things are never supposed to happen in real life, like a sledgehammer, like a bolt from out of the blue. One minute she was a seventeen year-old senior in high school waiting for a Sicilian pizza to go; the next one she was someone whose whole world had exploded, leaving her adrift in the Milky Way, so far from earth she was walking on stars. — Alice Hoffman

Having spent alarmingly large chunks of my life studying the white side of the Open Sicilian, I find myself asking, why did I bother? — Daniel J. King

I moved from Kentucky to Miramar, Florida, at about 8. I think I was in second grade. I still had my Southern accent, and down there, you got to experience a melting pot in full fury. All the kids I hung out with were, like, Sicilian kids from Jersey and New York. — Johnny Depp

We feel a special bond with Sicily and its people - in fact, our first campaigns were shot in Sicily, like the one shot in Vucciria Sicilian historical market We enjoyed showing the faces and the characters that crowd that beautiful market every day. — Stefano Gabbana

The Sicilian's word was not just law, it was gospel. — William Goldman