Italians Be Like Quotes & Sayings

Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can't be denied. It's beautiful and messy,
cracking a chest open and spilling their soul out for the world to see. It turns a person inside out, and there's no going back from it. Once the thunderbolt hits, your life is
irrevocably changed. — J.M. Darhower

In Rikers, you had the Italians over here, the Spanish over here, the Blacks here, then there would be your Christians here and your Muslim brotherhood here. It's just like the outside, but in very closed quarters where you have to get along or else. The sense of claustrophobia in 'Orange is the New Black' - that's real. — Sharon Jones

I love Italian opera - it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate. — D.H. Lawrence

Australian genre films were a lot of fun because they were legitimate genre movies. They were real genre films, and they dealt, in a way like the Italians did, with the excess of genre, and that has been an influence on me. — Quentin Tarantino

The final word on nutrition and health has been revealed. Compared to Americans, Brits, and Canadians, people of various nationalities suffer fewer heart attacks: the Japanese eat very little fat; Mexicans eat a lot of fat; the Chinese drink very little red wine; Italians drink a lot of red wine; Germans consume a lot of beer, sausages, and fats; Ukrainians consume a lot of vodka, pierogis, and cabbage rolls. And all suffer fewer heart attacks. Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you. — Bill Brohaugh

At the outset of the creation of the euro in 1999, it was expected that the southern eurozone economies would behave like those in the north; the Italians would behave like Germans. They didn't. Instead, northern Europe fell into subsidizing southern Europe's excess consumption, that is, its current account deficits. — Alan Greenspan

One can rarely say enough about the kindness of Italians. One is always treated as a human being who needs unpredictable things - like a moment by oneself with a bottle on the beach. They have a true gift for what can only be called spontaneous delicacy. — Lawrence Osborne

As we Italians say, the husband is like the government at Rome, all pomp; the wife is like the mafia, all power. — Michael Schmicker

The Italians live well. They have problems, like all countries, but they are well-dressed, the women are pretty. — Francois Pinault

Without an old country link and a strangling church like the Italians, or the Irish, or the Poles, without generations of the American forebears to bind you to American life, or blind you by your loyalties to its deformities, you could read whatever you wanted and write however and whatever you pleased. Alienated? Just another way to say 'set free.' A Jew set free from Jews - yet only by steadily maintaining self-consciousness as a Jew. That was the thrilling paradoxical kicker. — Philip Roth

Citizens of Liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic. You know what the big worry of the Western European is? It certainly isn't "how do I protect other countries?", like America worries about protecting countries. 37,000 Americans died saving South Korea from becoming like North Korea. How many Germans died saving South Korea? How many French? How many Italians? How many Spaniards?
We die for others.
You know what the big concern of Western Europeans is? Vacation time. They riot over vacation time. They riot over the retirement age.
RIOTS take place over these issues. This is narcissism. It doesn't matter what is happening in Cambodia. It doesn't matter what is happening in Syria. I want my vacation time. — Dennis Prager

Lucifer sharpened his gaze and focused on Ajax. "Yes ... I want you to drive over to New Jersey, load those two corpses into your car and take them back to the Italians ... personally"
"In my car?"
"They haven't been in the water more than a week, Ajax."
"But actually ... inside?"
"Well," Lucifer's patience was fading, "If you tie them to the fenders like you're coming back from Deer Camp, the Italians might not find you quite as endearing ... "
Lucifer and Ajax from The Ragtime Coven — Bruce Jenvey

To leave Italy at 17 without money and go to a country like England is very rare; Italians stay with the family until 30, 35. But I couldn't stand to live in this box anymore. I was getting bigger, and the box was getting smaller. — Riccardo Tisci

The whole world is festering with unhappy souls: The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles' Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch; and I don't like anybody very much! — Sheldon Harnick

The men who were well enough to stand had moved across the carriage to cheer the Italians as they went past. A crutch waved out of the window; bandaged forearms made the Red Salute. It was like an allegorical picture of war; the trainload of fresh men gliding proudly up the line, the maimed men sliding slowly down, and all the while the guns on the open trucks making one's heart leap as guns always do, and reviving that pernicious feeling, so difficult to get rid of, that war *is* glorious after all. — George Orwell

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. — Emma Goldman

In America they like my spicy TV alter ego, probably because there were a lot of Italians and Hispanics in the country, but the real L.A. life is a hard-working one. — Bruno Tonioli

To hear two American men congratulating each other on being heterosexual is one of the most chilling experiences - and unique to the United States. You don't hear two Italians sitting around complimenting each other because they actually like to go to bed with women. The American is hysterical about his manhood. — Gore Vidal

You've got pretty good taste." She pulled out a suit, looked at it, put it back, pulled out another. "I can remember, you always wore good suits, good-looking suits, even before you were rich."
"I like suits," he said. "They feel good. I like Italian suits, actually. I've had a couple of British suits, and they were okay, but they felt ... constructed. Like I was wearing a building. But the Italians - they know how to make a suit."
"Ever try French suits?"
"Yeah, three or four times. They're okay, but a little ... sharp-looking. They made me feel like a watch salesman."
"How about American suits?"
:Efficient," he said. "Do the job; don't feel like much. You always wear an American suit if you don't want people to notice you. — John Sandford

I was so happy when I went to Rome and I saw that the Romans eat them too, the squash blossoms. No wonder I like the Italians! — Sandra Cisneros

Rule No. 41. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. — Michael Pollan

This political disorder found expression in Machiavelli Prince. In the absence of any guiding principle, politics becomes a naked struggle for power; The Prince gives shrewd advice as to how to play this game successfully. What had happened in the great age of Greece happened again in Renaissance Italy: traditional moral restraints disappeared, because they were seen to be associated with superstition; the liberation from fetters made individuals energetic and creative, producing a rare florescence of genius; but the anarchy and treachery which inevitably resulted from the decay of morals made Italians collectively impotent, and they fell, like the Greeks, under the domination of nations less civilized than themselves but not so destitute of social cohesion. — Bertrand Russell

Pasquale considered his friend's face. It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face, like Dee's face, like Michael Deane's face. He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality - that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility, a quality that, in his estimation, even the youngest Italians lacked. Perhaps it was the difference in age between the countries - America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires. This reminded him of Alvis Bender's contention that stories were like nations - Italy a great epic poem, Britain a thick novel, America a brash motion picture in Technicolor - and he remembered, too, Dee Moray saying she'd spent years "waiting for her movie to start," and that she'd almost missed out on her life waiting for it. — Jess Walter

That feeling about trains, for instance. Of course he had long outgrown the boyish glamour of the steam-engine. Yet there was something that had an appeal for him in trains, especially in night-trains, which always put queer, vaguely improper notions in his head - though he would have been hard put to it to define them. Also he had an impression that those who leave by night-trains leave forever - an impression heightened the previous night by his glimpse of those Italians piled into their carriage like emigrants — Georges Simenon

I just want to remind everybody that it's Columbus Day. That all those of you that know Italians and like Italians are the people that might venture on to a ship and travel to explore and find new lands, this is your day. It's not St. Patty's Day. That's a different day entirely. — Les Miles

Italians in particular are seen as either benign and child-like (the sweet old nonna with her meatballs), menacing mobsters, or hyper-sexualized housewives and gigolos; the kind of nourishment I'm looking for doesn't lie in any of these stereotypes. — Christopher Castellani

All the suits I buy have to be tailored, no matter what. But it's not just because of my height; it's because I've been skating for so long. My waist is very small, but my legs are just huge. Most really nice suit makers are Italian, and usually they make suit pants for Italian men. I'm like, 'Those Italians must have pretty skinny legs.' — Apolo Ohno

The Italians have voices like peacocks - German gives me a cold in the head - and Russian is nothing but sneezing — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters. — Martin Scorsese

You can tell when Iraqis are getting upset because, like Italians we start talking with our hands. — Wafaa Bilal

Queens, New York. The most ethnically diverse region not just in the United States, but on the entire planet ... In Queens, you will find Korean kids who sound like black kids. Italians who sound like Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans who sound like Italians. Third-generation Irish who sound like old Jews. That's Queens. Not a melting pot, not even a tossed salad, but an all-you-can-eat, mix-and-match buffet. — Victor LaValle

Italians had a "national peculiarity" to use distinctive hand gestures and body language when they spoke: a resource that was, he believed, obvious to an Italian like Leonardo when he came to paint The Last Supper. — Ross King

We're delighted to have you here,' he said, putting an arm round the young man's shoulder, 'but a
word of advice. Don't try to be clever. We're all clever here. Only try to be kind, a little kind.'
Like most university stories, this one is variously attributed and it probably never even happened
but, as the Italians say, se non e vero, e ben trovato - even if it isn't true, it's well founded. — Stephen Fry

But of course the Western changed along with America's view of itself, from some sort of heroic country, where everybody's free, to the spiritually fucked-up defiled place it really is, and now you got jive Italians, if you can feature that, making the only Westerns worth seeing anymore because white America's just too fucking confused, can't figure out whether to embrace the myth or the anti-myth, so in a country where folks always figured you can escape your past, now the word is out that this is the country where you can do no such thing, this is the one place where, like the jive that finally becomes impossible to distinguish from the anti-jive, honor becomes impossible to distinguish from betrayal or just, you know, stone cold murder ... — Steve Erickson

Lemon trees, like Italians, seem to be happiest when they are touching one another — D.H. Lawrence

The people of Texas are rightly proud of their own, just like the French and the Italians, but visiting artists have often been given a shot in the history of art. — Clifford Ross

The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about - or as a ritual like filling up a car - but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon. — Anthony Bourdain

Take care, these Italians, full of failings, are neither you, nor me; they are your neighbors, the ones you meet on the staircase and whom you do not like to greet. — Alberto Sordi

I know Italians and I like them. A lot of my father's best friends were Italians. — Kirk Douglas

I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like? — Al Pacino

I love Italian fashion - the sense of style that Italians have as part of their DNA. Nobody is like them. — Sonam Kapoor

Maybe we like our politicians to appear like bumbling oafs. It certainly never did Ronald Reagan or George Bush any harm. The Italians still seem enamoured of Silvio Berlusconi - a man whose entry into a room is less likely to be greeted with the Italian national anthem than by the Benny Hill theme tune. — Rory Bremner

You probably think Italians like meals with heavy meats and sauces, but they actually prefer light meats. They see turkey as a healthy, light white meat that lends itself excellently to their style of cooking, and they use it in many different ways. Also, Europeans do not celebrate Thanksgiving so they perceive turkey as an all-year round option. — Todd English

Let me explain something to you. Look around here. How many people do you count? Sixty, eighty, eighty people? Greeks, Germans, Italians, French, Americans. Tourists from everywhere. Eating, drinking, talking, laughing. And from Bombay - Indians and Iranians and Afghans and Arabs and Africans. But how many of these people have real power, real destiny, real dynamic for their place, and their time, and the lives of thousand of people? I will tell you - four. Four people in this room with power, and the rest are like the rest of the people everywhere: powerless, sleepers in the dream. — Gregory David Roberts

Like many other who have lived long in a great capital, she had strong feelings about the various railway termini. They are our gates to the glorious and unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. In Paddington all Cornwall is latent and the remoter west; down the inclines of Liverpool Street lie fenlands and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through the pylons of Euston; Wessex behind the poised chaos of Waterloo. Italians realize this, as is natural; those of them who are so unfortunate as to serve as waiters in Berlin call the Anhalt Bahnhof the Stazione d'Italia, because by it they must return to their homes. And he is a chilly Londoner who does not endow his stations with some personality, and extend to them, however shyly, the emotions of fear and love. — E. M. Forster

Vegetables cooked for salads should always be on the crisp side, like those trays of zucchini and slender green beans and cauliflowerets in every trattoria in Venice, in the days when the Italians could eat correctly. You used to choose the things you wanted: there were tiny potatoes in their skins, remember, and artichokes boiled in olive oil, as big as your thumb, and much tenderer ... and then the waiter would throw them all into an ugly white bowl and splash a little oil and vinegar over them, and you would have a salad as fresh and tonic to your several senses as La Primavera. It can still be done, although never in the same typhoidic and enraptured air. You can still find little fresh vegetables, and still know how to cook them until they are not quite done, and chill them, and eat them in a bowl. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher