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

I sometimes wonder whether the act of surrender is not one of the greatest of all - the highest. It is one of the [most] difficult of all ... You see it's so immensely complicated. It needs real humility and at the same time, an absolute belief in one's own essential freedom. It is an act of faith. At the last moments, like all great acts, it is pure risk. This is true for me as a human being and as a writer. Dear Heaven, how hard it is to let go - to step into the blue. And yet one's creative life depends on it and one desires to do nothing else. — Katherine Mansfield

Now what I love in women is, they won't Or can't do otherwise than lie, but do it. So well, the very truth seems falsehood to it. — Lord Byron

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

It was more than childish perversity, of course, or the unexpected confidence she had recently acquired, that made her insist; she had indeed noticed that Gregor needed a lot of room to crawl about in, whereas the furniture, as far as anyone could see, was of no use to him at all. Girls of that age, though, do become enthusiastic about things and feel they must get their way whenever they can. Perhaps this was what tempted Grete to make Gregor's situation seem even more shocking than it was so that she could do even more for him. Grete would probably be the only one who would dare enter a room dominated by Gregor crawling about the bare walls by himself. So — Franz Kafka

Hungries toggle between two states. They're frozen in place most of the time, just standing there like they're never going to move again. Then they smell prey, or hear it, or catch sight of it, and they break into that terrifying dead sprint. No warm-up, no warning. Warp factor nine. — M.R. Carey

You're color blind, Jean Louise," he said. "You always have been, you always will be. The only differences you see between one human and another are differences in looks and intelligence and character and the like. You've never been prodded to look at people as a race, and now that race is the burning issue of the day, you're still unable to think racially. You see only people. — Harper Lee

Diplomacy was like a card game. The difference was that you never really knew the value of the cards in your own hand. — Tom Clancy

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

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

Things are not as easy to understand and say as we might prefer to believe; most events are inexpressible, happening in a space where no word has ever set foot, and most inexpressible of all are works of art, mysterious existences, whose life continues as ours passes away. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Reality is always richer, more unpredictable than our deductions — 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

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

A sadness came over me. Returning to Kabul was like running into an old, forgotten friend and seeing that life hadn't been good to him, that he'd become homeless and destitute. — Khaled Hosseini

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

Translation is the other side of a tapestry. — 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

I am obsessed with trash TV. I watch all reality shows. I watch all the 'Housewives.' I am a huge fan of 'New Jersey.' — NeNe Leakes

... 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