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

The Sicilian Defense album was never released and never will be if I have anything to do with it. I have not heard it since it was finished. I hope the tapes no longer exist. — Alan Parsons

Muse usually gestured like an amphetamine-fueled Sicilian who's nearly gotten clipped by a speeding car. — Harlan Coben

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

A word?" the Sicilian said, raising his arms. His mile was more angelic than his face
Buttercup halted. "Speak."
"We are but poor circus performers," the Sicilian explained, "It is dark and we are lost. We were told there was a village nearby that might enjoy our skills."
"You were misinformed," Buttercup told him, "There is no one, not for many miles."
"Then there will be no one to hear you scream. — William Goldman

I like Sicilian food. It's real peasant food. — Raymond Kelly

I come from a line of great Sicilian women, and their mentality is to endure and push through to the other side. — Cyndi Lauper

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 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

Sometimes they'll make little Play-Doh animals, and when they go to sleep, I'll break the heads off the animals and put them at the foot of their beds for them to discover in the morning. Nothing wrong with sending your kids a little Sicilian message. — Jerry Seinfeld

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

He pointed into the pizza box, and when I looked closely, I could see a tiny bit of green wire sticking out from under the thick Sicilian crust. — James Patterson

Each of our collections is like a movie. We write the script, and this Sicilian woman who has traveled around the world plays the lead role. — Domenico Dolce

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

Fortunately for all concerned save the sharks, it was around this time that the moon came out.
"There she is," shouted the Sicilian, and like lightning the Spaniard turned the boat and as the boat drew close the Turk reached out a giant arm and then she was back in the safety of her murderers while all around them the sharks bumped each other in wild frustration. — William Goldman

My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a very poor family. From Sicilian origin, I was the first person in my family to complete high school, let alone go to college. — Philip Zimbardo

We are but poor circus performers. the Sicilian explained. It is dark and we are lost. We were told that there is a village nearby that might enjoy our skills. You were misinformed, Buttercup said. There is no one not for many miles. Then no one will be able to hear you scream. the Sicilian said, and he jumped with frightening agility toward her face. — William Goldman

In America most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me. — Al Pacino

Montalbano felt moved. This was real friendship, Sicilian friendship, the kind based on intuition, on what was left unsaid. With a true friend, one never needs to ask, because the other understands on his own accordingly. — Andrea Camilleri

I need to make things mine. It annoys me to buy something that is imposed on me. When I have a suit made, I go to the Sicilian tailor Alessandro Martorana in Turin. I like shorter jacket sleeves and often fold the cuffs up. It's more modern that way. — Lapo Elkann

But beneath it all will run that Sicilian understanding that the underside of joy is grief, that the face of sacrifice and suffering is the dark mirror image of pleasure and enjoyment, that every moment of arrival is to be treasured and enjoyed in the full knowledge that it has brought us a moment closer to the moment of departure. — Francine Prose

Organised brigandage has ceased to exist, but murder and highway robbery are still far too common in the less frequented districts. Travellers rarely suffer to-day, however. It is the wealthy inhabitants who run risks at the hand of the mafia, or lawless Sicilian. — Alec-Tweedie

Fool!" cried the hunchback. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well known is this: 'Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. — William Goldman

The Sicilian tyrants never devised a greater punishment than envy. — Juvenal

See?" Fezzik pointed then. Far down, at the very bottom of the mountain path, the man in black could be seen running. "Inigo is beaten."
Inconceivable!" exploded the Sicilian.
Fezzik never dared disagree with the hunchback. "I'm so stupid," Fezzik nodded. "Inigo has not lost to the man in black, he has defeated him. And to prove it he has put on all the man in black's clothes and masks and hoods and boots and gained eighty pounds. — William Goldman

The envious pine at others' success; no greater punishment than envy was devised by Sicilian tyrants. — Horace

I want a baby from an Italian - possibly Sicilian - donor. — Lady Gaga

My mom was Sicilian, my dad was Sicilian. Mom was a great cook, but all the women were. — Chazz Palminteri

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You grow up in a Sicilian household, becoming an actor is not a big leap. — Vincent Schiavelli

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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