111 quotes found
"I've never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don't understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now."
"I was born wise. Street-wise, people-wise, self-wise. This wisdom was my birthright. I was also born old. And illegitimate. But the two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty."
"I was not intrigued with the accouterments of success and fame, the furs, jewels, expensive automobiles and mansions... I can assure you that these things were not on my mind when I sat spellbound in that Pozzuoli movie house. It was what these performers on the screen were doing, not what they received for doing it."
"I was blessed with a sense of my own destiny. I have never sold myself short. I have never judged myself by other people’s standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself. So failure or reversal does not bring out resentment in me because I cannot blame others for any misfortune that befalls me."
"My philosophy is that it's better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe and not to explore at all."
"A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view."
"Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical."
"Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got."
"Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful."
"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age."
"Being beautiful can never hurt, but you have to have more. You have to sparkle, you have to be fun, you have to make your brain work if you have one. Being a Hollywood beauty was a mixed blessing. Men are men, with all that testosterone, and when a pretty girl comes in front of them what can you expect? The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous and fortunate misunderstanding."
"After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It's better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life."
"My mother’s feelings were all closed off inside herself…I was allowed to be a part of it, never in a good way, never like mother and daughter."
"I wanted to be able to walk into the kind of places my father walked into. I wanted to understand what it was like to live like he did. I wanted reasons. I wanted answers…But I got nowhere."
"Not at first. She was against new things. She thought I would never be successful, and that was wrong, she was wrong. Later she started to believe that I could maybe be somebody. But it was always a big maybe. To her, the life that I wanted, it was all a dream. And she didn’t believe in dreams."
"Naples is so strong, so vital. It’s about music and dance. Books and books of history. Read all the books first and then we can talk."
"Yes, well, maybe sometimes. But then I say to myself: ‘Shut up. Be strong. Just keep going and try. Sometimes you make mistakes and sometimes you win.’ I made some mistakes,”…But still I won."
"Sophia Loren, my favorite actress"
"The first thought a Western woman has when she arrives in a rigorously Muslim country like Pakistan is that she appears to be the only woman to have survived a tsunami that has washed away all the others."
"What's the point anyway — Of suffering, dying? It teaches us to live, boy. A man who does not struggle does not live, he survives."
"People like me who have passion are derided: 'Ha ha ha! She's hysterical!' 'She's very passionate!' Listen how the Americans speak about me: 'A very passionate Italian.'"
"Americans," she said, repeating for me something she told the , "you have taught me this stupid word: cool. Cool, cool, cool! Coolness, coolness, you've got to be cool. Coolness! When I speak like I speak now, with passion, you smile and laugh at me! I've got passion. They've got passion. They have such passion and such guts that they are ready to die for it."
"Our weakness in the West is born of the fact of so-called "objectivity." Objectivity does not exist. The word is a hypocrisy which is sustained by the lie that the truth stays in the middle. No, sir: Sometimes truth stays on one side only."
"Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense."
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon... I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."
"If you put a pistol against my head and ask which I think is worse, Muslims or Mexicans, I'd have to think a moment, then I'd say the Muslims because they've broken my balls."
"It's been four years since I spoke about Islamic Nazism, the war with the West, the cult of death, the suicide of Europe. A Europe which is no longer Europe but Eurabia, which with its softness, its inertia, its creed and its enslavement to the enemy, is digging his own grave. (Sono quattr' anni che parlo di nazismo islamico, di guerra all' Occidente, di culto della morte, di suicidio dell' Europa. Un' Europa che non è più Europa ma Eurabia e che con la sua mollezza, la sua inerzia, la sua cecità, il suo asservimento al nemico si sta scavando la propria tomba.)"
"Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense... I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion... I am disgusted by the anti-Semitism of many Italians, of many Europeans... Look at the school system of the West today. Students do not know history! They don't know who Churchill was! In Italy, they don't even know who Cavour was!... Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty... State-run television stations contribute to the resurgent anti-Semitism, crying only over Palestinian deaths while playing down Israeli deaths, glossing over them in unwilling tones... The increased presence of Muslims in Italy and in Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom... The Muslims refuse our culture and try to impose their culture on us. I reject them, and this is not only my duty toward my culture-it is toward my values, my principles, my civilization... The struggle for freedom does not include the submission to a religion which, like the Muslim religion, wants to annihilate other religions... The West reveals a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be considered pathological; it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive... These charlatans care about the Palestinians as much as I care about the charlatans. That is not at all... When I was given the news, I laughed. The trial is nothing else but a demonstration that everything I've written is true... President Bush has said, 'We refuse to live in fear.'...Beautiful sentence, very beautiful. I loved it! But inexact, Mr. President, because the West does live in fear. People are afraid to speak against the Islamic world. Afraid to offend, and to be punished for offending, the sons of Allah. You can insult the Christians, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Jews. You can slander the Catholics, you can spit on the Madonna and Jesus Christ. But, woe betide the citizen who pronounces a word against the Islamic religion."
"The problem is that the solution does not depend upon the death of Osama bin Laden. Because the Osama bin Ladens are too many, by now: as cloned as the sheep of our research laboratories. In fact, the best trained and the more intelligent do not stay in the Muslim countries... They stay in our own countries, in our cities, our universities, our business companies. They have excellent bonds with our churches, our banks, our televisions, our radios, our newspapers, our publishers, our academic organizations, our unions, our political parties. Worse, they live in the heart of a society that hosts them without questioning their differences, without checking their bad intentions, without penalizing their sullen fanaticism."
"This too famous, too important, too lucky man, whom they call Superman, Superstar, Superkraut, and who stitches together paradoxical alliances, reaches impossible agreements, keeps the world holding its breath as though the world were his students at Harvard."
"Among today's Italians, when treading upon Haile Selassie's memory, the sense of guilt and shame is such that they react by seeing only his positive traits: the merits of his past actions. His portrayals always brim with excessive deferance, unwarranted admiration and delusion. They go on and on about his priestly composure, his regal dignity, his great intelligence and his generosity towards former adversaries. They never explain who this sovereign, who we made into a victim, really was. They never dare tell us if he was something more, or less, than a victim. For example, that he was an old man hardened in principles which were centuries out of date; that he was the absolute ruler of a nation which has never heard the words rights and democracy, which lives in a near prehistoric fashion in the suburbs, oppressed by hunger, disease, ignorance and the squallor of a feudal regime which even we did not experience during the darkest years of the Medieval period."
"Hearing him speak is so fun, reassuring I dare say. You can say all you like about Sihanouk: that he's an atrocious liar, a madman, a fraud, a swashbuckler, an international blot. You may think that, but you cannot deny how in this age in which the political arena seems to generate only dull, obtuse and boring characters with no imagination, he's a kind of miracle."
"Maybe they [women who were executed by the Taliban] were guilty of the worst of all crimes: to laugh. Yes. Laughing. I said laughter. Didn't you know that with the Taliban in Afghanistan women can't laugh, that they are even forbidden to laugh?."
"To make you cry I’ll tell you about the twelve young impure men I saw executed at Dacca at the end of the Bangladesh war. They executed them on the field of Dacca stadium, with bayonet blows to the torso or abdomen, in the presence of twenty thousand faithful who applauded in the name of God from the bleachers. They thundered "Allah akbar, Allah akbar." Yes, I know: the ancient Romans, those ancient Romans of whom my culture is so proud, entertained themselves in the Coliseum by watching the deaths of Christians fed to the lions. I know, I know: in every country of Europe the Christians, those Christians whose contribution to the History of Thought I recognize despite my atheism, entertained themselves by watching the burning of heretics. But a lot of time has passed since then, we have become a little more civilized, and even the sons of Allah ought to have figured out by now that certain things are just not done. After the twelve impure young men they killed a little boy who had thrown himself at the executioners to save his brother who had been condemned to death. They smashed his head with their combat boots. And if you don’t believe it, well, reread my report or the reports of the French and German journalists who, horrified as I was, were there with me. Or better: look at the photographs that one of them took. Anyway this isn’t even what I want to underline. It’s that, at the conclusion of the slaughter, the twenty thousand faithful (many of whom were women) left the bleachers and went down on the field. Not as a disorganized mob, no. In an orderly manner, with solemnity. They slowly formed a line and, again in the name of God, walked over the cadavers. All the while thundering Allah–akbar, Allah–akbar. They destroyed them like the Twin Towers of New York. They reduced them to a bleeding carpet of smashed bones."
"I am not speaking, obviously, to the laughing hyenas who enjoy seeing images of the wreckage and snicker good–it–serves–the–Americans–right. I am speaking to those who, though not stupid or evil, are wallowing in prudence and doubt. And to them I say: "Wake up, people. Wake up!!" Intimidated as you are by your fear of going against the current—that is, appearing racist (a word which is entirely inapt as we are speaking not about a race but about a religion)—you don’t understand or don’t want to understand that a reverse–Crusade is in progress. Accustomed as you are to the double–cross, blinded as you are by myopia, you don’t understand or don’t want to understand that a war of religion is in progress. Desired and declared by a fringe of that religion, perhaps, but a war of religion nonetheless. A war which they call Jihad. Holy War. A war that might not seek to conquer our territory, but that certainly seeks to conquer our souls. That seeks the disappearance of our freedom and our civilization. That seeks to annihilate our way of living and dying, our way of praying or not praying, our way of eating and drinking and dressing and entertaining and informing ourselves. You don’t understand or don’t want to understand that if we don’t oppose them, if we don’t defend ourselves, if we don’t fight, the Jihad will win. And it will destroy the world that for better or worse we’ve managed to build, to change, to improve, to render a little more intelligent, that is to say, less bigoted—or even not bigoted at all. And with that it will destroy our culture, our art, our science, our morals, our values, our pleasures...Christ! Don’t you realize that the Osama Bin Ladens feel authorized to kill you and your children because you drink wine or beer, because you don’t wear your beard long or a chador, because you go to the theater or the movies, because you listen to music and sing pop songs, because you dance in discos or at home, because you watch TV, wear miniskirts or short–shorts, because you go naked or half naked to the beach or the pool, because you *** when you want and where you want and who you want? Don’t you even care about that, you fools? I am an atheist, thank God. And I have no intention of letting myself be killed for it."
"There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape."
"I have informed myself better about Buddhism and I found that, unlike Muslims, with their an-eye-for-an-eye and a-tooth-for-a-tooth, and unlike Christians who speak of forgiveness but invented Hell, Buddhists never use the word "enemy". I have found that they have never made converts with violence, they have never made territorial conquests through the pretext of religion, and they don't have the concept of Holy War. Some deny this. They deny that Buddhism is a peaceful religion... Each family includes people of bad character. But even they recognize that the bad character of those warrior monks was not used to proselytize, and admit that the history of Buddhism does not record a ferocious Saladin or popes like Leo IX or Urban II or Innocent II or Pius II or Julius II... Yet the children of Allah also fight the Buddhists. They blow up their statues, they prevent them from practising their religion."
"My heart is also tightening for the way in which they have killed them [the Buddhas of Bamiyan]... They have not acted with the irrationality and bestiality of the Chinese Maoists who destroyed Lhasa in 1951, broke into monasteries and into the palace of the Dalai Lama and like drunken buffalo razed to the ground the monuments of a civilization... The destruction of Lhasa was not preceded by a trial... But in the case of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, there was a real process. There was a real sentence, then an execution was decided based on legal norms or presumed legal norms. It was therefore, a premeditated crime."
"Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony...In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage in the Islamic expansionism."
"I also saw the cement-quarry where a couple of days earlier the Muslims had massacred eight hundred Hindus. Many women included. And where their corpses lay abandoned to the appetite of the vultures. Hundreds and hundreds of vultures unrolling long paper-streamers which were not paper-streamers: they were the Hindu bowels torn out by their beaks and carried up in the sky. Yes, I rediscovered that world in Dacca."
"The editor of Il Foglio, [Giuliano Ferrara], is so blinded by his neoconservative ideology that he fails to realise that by promoting Oriana Fallaci's crude anti-Islamic racism, he is paving the way for all other forms of racism and, sooner or later, for a resurgence of anti-Semitism, which will be very difficult to combat if anti-Islamic racism has been endorsed."
"Fallaci is a great journalist for the same reason she is a mediocre novelist. She is an enormous, protruding uterus that embraces a wide swath of reality. But what she gains in breadth when she writes articles, she loses in depth when she writes books."
"With Oriana Fallaci's demise at 77 from a host of cancers, in September, in her beloved Florence, there also died something of the art of the interview. Her absolutely heroic period was that of the 1970s, probably the last chance we had of staving off the complete triumph of celebrity culture."
"Ever since the secret trip to China, my own relationship with Nixon had grown complicated. Until then I had been an essentially anonymous White House assistant. But now his associates were unhappy, and not without reason, that some journalists were giving me perhaps excessive credit for the more appealing aspects of our foreign policy while blaming Nixon for the unpopular moves. . These tendencies were given impetus by an interview I granted to the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, without doubt the single most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press. I saw her briefly on Nov. 2 and 4, 1972, in my office. I did so largely out of vanity. She had interviewed leading personalities all over the world. Fame was sufficiently novel for me to be flattered by the company I would be keeping. I had not bothered to read her writings; her evisceration of other victims was thus unknown to me. I paid the price for my naiveté. The quotes ascribed to me, statements of marginal taste gathered together in what she presented as a conversation, were the most self-serving utterances of my entire public career."
"Even though you are on the blacklist of my authorities, I'll add you to the whitelist of my heart."
"Who is this woman? Where does she come from? What does she want? Enough, go away, ça suffit! ça suffit!!"
"L’Europeo considers her its star reporter. She covers the Indo-Pakistani War and the Maoist uprising in Hong Kong. Then she travels to the Middle East to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to South America to write about guerrilla groups fighting against various dictatorships. She quickly becomes famous for her courage and her combative spirit. A colleague remembers: “During the war between India and Pakistan, while we were following the Sikh troops and the Gurkhas, she took a different route. She got on a rickety boat and sailed up the Brahmaputra and arrived in Dacca at the moment the dictator’s troops were killing their prisoners and burying them in common graves. Some were still alive. She made such a fuss that it was a miracle they didn’t shoot her.”"
"Oriana Fallaci is not only a great journalist: for me she is "the" journalism. And I underline "is" (wasn't) for many reasons. One of which lies in the fact that its pages will long remain the best school of journalism, but above all a formidable breath of intellectual freedom, a vaccine against all idiots, variously placed in the hierarchies of power, and against the lazy cowardice of conformism."
"Because my mother was Ingrid Bergman and my father was Roberto Rossellini, I was intimidated about becoming an actress and a director…Both [in terms of her parents’ reputations upon entering the acting world]…It opened doors, but the judgment was much more severe…In the press, they said: ‘She looks like her mother, but she certainly hasn’t inherited her talent.’ It crushes you. If they say it today, you just say: well, maybe that’s true. It doesn’t hurt you so much."
"…I have not even been nominated for one. But it doesn’t affect me any more. This is the great thing about getting old: things that preoccupied you when you were young cease to preoccupy you. I would have loved to have had one Oscar. Well, too bad. I have six sheep, two dogs, two children."
"Women executives have a different sensitivity. Male executives only understood makeup or fashion as an instrument of seduction, because that was addressed to them. They didn’t understand that we like to put on makeup or dress up just because it’s a game; it’s pleasurable."
"I’m not there now to represent beauty; I’m there to represent a different dream. It may be defined as joyfulness; life goes on and there are many chapters. I think that’s why they keep me."
"Ageing brings a lot of happiness. You get fatter and more wrinkles, and that’s not so good, but there is a freedom that comes with it. The freedom is: I better do what I want to do now, because I’ll be dead soon. So this is my last chance. Also, there’s a serenity that comes – I had the career I had, good or bad, I did the best I could, and now I continue pursuing what is interesting to me."
"I really like both going out to do the services, and preparing the news. These are two equally fascinating aspects."
"The positive aspect is that it is a job that varies from day to day. Events and news are always new. Then it is a great advantage to combine work and passion."
"A cute girl, when she makes a mistake, is more easily subject to criticism. Now it is a problem that I no longer ask myself, I try to give my best and be as professional as possible. Then the physical aspect is certainly a good business card for the world of TV, but it goes into the background."
"Journalism was born "man". Women have managed to assert themselves and certainly there has been no lack of authoritative female signatures. However, I think that to have a female director requires further evolution."
"Creatures had a Celestial Father, but the Divine love was not content. In its delirium of love it wanted them to have a Celestial Mother as well as a terrestrial Mother. In that way, even if the loving care and tenderness of the Celestial Paternity would not be enough to make creatures to love Him, the caring and tenderness of a Celestial and human Mother would lead them to abandon themselves in her arms. By letting themselves be conquered by her love, a link of connection would form to banish any distance, fear or apprehension, in order to love the One Who had formed her love of them, and in order to be loved Himself. For this, the most astonishing portents were needed, along with a love that never says "enough" and only a God can do."
"The Divine Will contains the creative strenght. From within God's one single "Fiat" came out billions and billions of stars. From the Fiat Mihi" of the Mother of God, from which Redemption had its origin, came out billions and billions of acts of grace, which communicate themselves to souls. These acts of grace are more beautiful, more resplendent and more varied than billions of stars! The Divine Fiat is full of life, and in fact It is life itself, and alla lives and things come out from within the Fiat. From the Fiat of God, Creation came out, and in each created thing can be seen the imprint of that Fiat. From the "Fiat Mihi" of the Blessed Virgin, pronounced in the Divine Will with the same power of the Fiat of Creation, Redemption came forth. Therefore everything that concerns the Redemption bears the imprint of her "Fiat Mihi".Even the very Humanity of her Son, His steps, works and words, were sealed with Mary's "Fiat Mihi". (p. 107)"
"I loved everyone with deep tenderness."
"To live the Inhabitation is to live one's Baptism. It would be a grave error to believe that calling souls to nourish their lives with this adorable mystery is to call them to a special "devotion": it is rather an invitation to live by the grace that Baptism has given them, to penetrate the divine reality promised to us by Jesus: Veniemus et apud eum mansionem faciemus."
"Never forget that in our soul is the dwelling place of the Most Holy Trinity, as in a new heaven. We often strive to unite ourselves with God by complicated means and do not think that we always have within us, as long as we are in a state of grace, the divine Guest....... If among our occupations we would often collect ourselves for a single moment within ourselves and make contact with a single thought with the Most Holy Trinity, who deigns to sanctify our hearts, we would soon discover infinite treasures."
"Make the indwelling (of the three divine Persons in me) the centre of my life."
"Living the Inhabitation is not an extraordinary thing, but the logical consequence of our Baptism."
"[Christ's pain] is ours as all things belong to us and Him together. We take this supreme gift from the Master and bring it back to Him in the bosom of the Trinity... so that through Him it may be presented to the Father and become precious in His eyes. Then the pain of a small soul becomes again the pain of Christ, of the humanised Word, and is transformed into a source of grace... for many souls."
"After the transition from tenacious adolescent atheism to an unconditional and persevering surrender to God, Itala faced the ascent to the mountain of holiness by overcoming every psychological and spiritual obstacle...In addition to prayer and advice, Itala, despite her less than florid financial circumstances, was generous with charity. In Blessed Itala Mela, the Church leaves behind a message of confidence in the possibility of the laity not only to live Christian holiness to the full, but also to be creators and protagonists of the cultural and spiritual renewal of society. (Angelo Amato)"
"Tandem venit amor, qualem texisse pudori quam nudasse alicui sit mihi, Fama, magis."
"Exoluit promissa Venus: mea gaudia narret, dicetur si quis non habuisse sua."
"Sed peccasse iuvat, vultus componere famae taedet: cum digno digna fuisse ferar."
"Ne tibi sim, mea lux, aeque iam fervida cura ac videor paucos ante fuisse dies, si quicquam tota commisi stulta iuventa cuius me fatear paenituisse magis, hesterna quam te solum quod nocte reliqui ardorem cupiens dissimulare meum."
"Nowe, after my dome, Dame Sulpicia at Rome, Whose name regystred was For euer in tables of bras, Because that she dyd pas In poesy to endyte, And eloquently to wryte, Though she wolde pretende My sparowe to commende, I trowe she coude not amende Reportynge the vertues all Of my sparowe royall."
"Somewhat awkward in expression, they are remarkable for their candor."
"An admirable Electra was the youthful Alessandra; admirable for the manner in which she, an Italian, pronounced the speech of Athens; in the just intonations of her voice, in preserving the illusion of the scene, in faithfully portraying the character, and regulating the expression, gestures and movements, proper to her part; in keeping the language of passion within the bounds of decorum, in awakening the pity of the audience by the sight of her tearful face. All were deeply moved, but oh! what envy did I feel within my heart when she clasped Orestes to her breast and cried, 'Do I hold thee in mine arms?' and he replied, 'Oh, mayest thou ever hold me thus!'"
"At last I have found that which I desired, that which I have always sought, the love long sighed for, the love beheld in my dreams! A maiden of perfect beauty, of grace which is natural and not acquired; a maiden learned in Greek and Latin, excellent in the dance, skilled in music, in which qualities, veiled by her modesty, she is the rival of the Graces. I have found her! But what doth it profit me, if I, who burn for her, can see her scarce once a year?"
"The serenity of our faces and the happiness of our hearts are the greatest testimony to the appearance of majesty. For there you have the most reliable witnesses of our sentiments. For that which is harbored in the heart shines forth as though through a window, and that which you cannot hear because of this speaker’s lack of eloquence can be perceived through comments from the populace and from the eyes of everyone here just as joy is palpable in the looks of those who are rejoicing. Thus it is that, since everyone is over. come with incredible joy, and you with your joyous gaze have brought kudos and felicity, all men think that this illustrious day should not only be marked, as they say with a white stone, but everyone thinks the day should be commemorated each year with solemn honors. For no matter how ignorant one may be by nature, is there anyone who would not embrace the memory of the queen of the Sarmatians? Who would not marvel at the greatness of her august and holy presence? Who would not worship and revere her as though she were a goddess?In order to respond to so many distinguished and renowned women, which I can do, I shall say that the saying "the fickle herd can feed on heavenly air" certainly can never be, since, while the divine beauty of your mind and body has slipped away from my heart and mind, the memory of your name will remain so deeply ingrained in everyone’s mind that no age will ever obliterate it.But to say something myself to celebrate the greatness of your fame, which has traveled to the ends of the earth while I have remained silent, I would gladly spend all the days of my life. Nor is there anything that could please me more or that I could hope for more than that, not because I think your name would be embellished by my work and industry, but so that in glorifying you I might hope that my life too might be consigned to immortality."
"Comedy comes from a very deep background: I went down deep, collected my shells and when I came up, I made sure that everything I had brought back did a somersault. Humour does not come only from ridicule; on the contrary, we laugh not at someone but thanks to someone: this is its greatness."
"I have always read a lot, ever since I was a young girl. [...] Later, I started writing, but only for myself. The stimulus came after reading Proust's Recherche in its entirety. When I decided to submit something to a publishing house and was told that no, it wasn't good enough, I was very satisfied."
"[Marchesini:] 'We have always been very close. There is always respect, friendship and professionalism. We still keep in touch even now that our paths on stage have separated. When Massimo told us he wanted to do other things on his own, we were sorry, but it also seemed like the most natural and right thing to do.‘ [Interviewer] ’What was it like being between two men?" [Marchesini:] 'I always felt like a fusilli inside a packet of macaroni, but that's fine with me. All in all, when I think about what we did, I feel that we had a sense of success, yes, we did, and in the end, perhaps the responsibility of always having to live up to expectations weighed on us a little."
"Acting means telling the truth about things, about the world, even if it may seem like a contradiction. Because fiction is one thing, acting is another."
"If I thought my apprenticeship was over, I would be the first to be done for. It's a stimulus that you need all the time, otherwise you risk feeling like you've got nothing left to learn."
"What pisses me off the most is that it seems like if I wear a miniskirt or a revealing dress – because maybe I like myself like that at the moment – then what I say carries less weight, as if to talk about serious things I have to dress the way people expect me to dress to talk about certain topics."
"You don't need to know if a relationship will work. It needs to start."
"I'm 40, not 20, when your hormones are going crazy, your head is full of dreams, and your future is in your hands. I'm 40, not 60. You've worked out who you are, you've won your battles, and you've given up on the ones that weren't right for you anymore. Your 40s are the stage of self-awareness. It's a middle-earth, like the one in The Lord of the Rings. You have to start getting to know yourself again. You look in the mirror and only see flaws, because they teach you to stop time, not to accept it, which is the biggest challenge. Accepting change […] by giving yourself centre stage."
"Interviewer: What memories do you have of your time at school as a pupil? Delogu: I felt like I was in a kind of trance, as if I were in a suspended world. I couldn't understand why my classmates understood and learned concepts so quickly, while I had to struggle with them."
"Support for people with dyslexia cannot be left to personal sensitivity and goodwill. What is needed is specific teacher training. And here in Italy, we're behind on this."
"I have no taboos about my body. That's just the way I am. I joke that I dress for your decency, not mine."
"(About Mara Venier) Her way of hosting, of running a salon. You can't learn the kind of chemistry she has. You either have it or you don't. She is a great professional and a great woman. She has given so much of herself in so many battles. What's more, Renzo always speaks very highly of her. And I knew she was a wonderful person, even though I’d never met her. But standing in front of her and seeing how, even while sitting, she can fill the studio and make it a part of herself was a great lesson."
"[When asked what a dyslexic person lacks] Automatism. When you learn to drive, you have to think carefully about pulling the clutch, engaging the gear, and starting the car. These are all things that you gradually learn to do in the right order, but once you've done it five, six, seven, a thousand times, it becomes automatic. That automaticity that people with dyslexia lack."
"[About dyslexia, a condition he suffers from] The mind of a dyslexic person is more 'artistic' and relies heavily on interpretation. So, drawing is easier for them, partly because of the colours. I'm a black belt at puzzles. When I was little, I was one of the few girls who could solve those tiny house puzzles with the coloured holes on top. [...] I block them with complete peace of mind now. I've got the fastest finger in the West."
"(About the EasyReading font that helps people with dyslexia overcome reading difficulties) [...] What amazes me is that many people didn't know about the existence of a special, highly readable font. What's more, it's an Italian invention […], a way of reading that is easier for people with dyslexia, but also much more convenient for those without dyslexia. What's more, some of the letters aren't the same, so text can be read more smoothly."
"(The letters of the alphabet: a stumbling block for people with dyslexia) They're difficult because they only have meaning in that particular position."
"The strange thing? For me, as someone who is dyslexic, an 'A' can twist in a thousand different ways and become a shape, not necessarily a fixed symbol. The letters kind of fly around because my mind is processing them. This used to make me suffer a bit: the rules of writing come in forcefully, and you have to deal with them."
"I've learnt a few little tricks that have put me on a par with the others. It's as if I'd made my own glasses, and now I can see perfectly."
"Sometimes, when I'm tired, my words get mixed up: I'm fond of them, and my husband always laughs at that."
"Arbore, Frassica and Giusti are artists I work well with because they haven't imposed any rules or judgements on me. Success came three years ago, and so did professionalism. But I know that my distinctive way of presenting is down to my dyslexia: I don't follow what the writers have written; instead, I make the concept of the programme my own and internalise it."
"I realised that [film making] is truly a team effort, much more so than TV. When you present a programme, you're at the forefront and you have the opportunity to set the pace and provide a unifying theme for the production. A film, on the other hand, is a montage of lots of scenes, most of which you're not in. On set, everyone is on an equal footing, and you put yourself in the director's hands."
"Interviewer: What does body positivity mean to you? Delogu: It definitely means being at peace with yourself, but it also means not pissing other people off. If other people's opinions can help me develop and grow, I welcome them with open arms. On the other hand, if it's expressed solely to assert oneself at the expense of my peace of mind, then no. I'd be tempted to say: 'Who actually believes you?'"
"I'm dyslexic in an Italy that doesn't even know how to pronounce the name of this disorder [...]. From a young age, I had to build a shield around myself so I wouldn't let all those people who called me stupid get to me. If I'm not intimidated by criticism today, it's only because I grew up in a very tough environment, like a minefield."
"Interviewer: [...] Is it true that you have rediscovered the Gospel? Delogu: Yes [...]. As a child, I received a Christian upbringing, but catechism had been somewhat imposed on me, with a harsh, not very inclusive approach. At the tender age of 38, I picked up the Gospel again – I had felt a bit put off by it before – and I rediscovered it: in some ways, I also felt a bit deceived, because what I had in my hands was a very inclusive text, one of love and understanding for others. I realise these might seem like trivial observations, but for me, a new path has opened up."
"My secret is that I can't sit still – I always need to find something new. I have an attention deficit disorder, and it gives me so much: I have to channel all my energy into a relatively short period of time, and I try to do it as best I can. I think it's one of my strengths, and I'm happy that people like it."
"Because I do so many different things, the people who appreciate me and follow me sometimes come to me from different backgrounds, from different places. Perhaps what people like about me is that I always engage on an equal footing with those who follow me and appreciate my work: I speak directly, and if something goes wrong, I'll argue [laughs, ed.] and then make up."
"In my life, my revolutionary nature has shown itself in the fact that I haven't changed according to what I've been asked to do. I've never 'changed my tune' because of someone else's decision, but only when it was the right time for me, when I felt I wanted to reinvent myself. I've sometimes been asked to be less feisty or, during my first auditions, less approachable and to adopt a more detached style of presenting...I haven't given in."
"Interviewer: [...] you revealed that you have dyslexia. What did this discovery mean to you?'}}"
"I just live, without that anxiety that used to take everything away from me, the anxiety of having to answer society's questions. [...] When are you going to have a child? When are you going to do a more important programme? So, when are you going to grow up? But I've realised that growing up isn't compulsory – only maturing is. Interviewer: What's the difference? Delogu: Growing up is associated with a certain idea of becoming an adult, which means being a serious, calm and predictable person. But that's not who I am, and that's not who I want to be. [...] Between the ages of 30 and 38, like many people, I had become complacent about who I was. I used to say to myself: this is who I am, this is my life, this is what I've chosen. For so many years, I wore a mask – the mask of a reassuring person, someone who would be good at starting a family. I had put myself in a position where I had to answer other people's questions. My divorce was precisely the opportunity for me to change. I looked in the mirror and said to myself: 'What do I do now?' Do I die, or do I rebuild myself?'"
"[...] It seems that only if you become a mother are you a grown-up and have done your duty in the world."
"When I was a child, I didn't think I'd turn out like this. I'm sarcastic, I have fun, I like to smile and be with other people, but I find it hard to trust people, and I also really enjoy being on my own. And I have an immense need to create. I realised this while crying one day, and the next day in the shower, with Max Pezzali playing in the background."
"Interviewer: She realised she wanted to do TV when she was a teenager, in Rimini... Delogu: I was 14. We were at an event where everyone was waiting for Cristina D'Avena, who was late."
"Interviewer: What aspect of "Emilia Romagna has stayed with you? Delogu: Determination. "Don't despair, there's a solution" is the phrase I heard most often."
"Interviewer: In your work, is luck more important than determination? Delogu: Luck is the variable; determination is the daily kick-start: without it, I would have given up years ago. Those who win are the ones who grit their teeth, who know their limits but still set themselves ambitious goals."
"I was 19 when I registered for VAT, thanks to Gialappa's. We were a group of dancers in miniskirts and boots who made fun of the phenomenon of 'letterine' and 'veline'. Every now and then, people bring up that experience thinking they can discredit me, but it was actually thanks to Gialappa's Band and Mago Forest that, even though I was doing a job on the fringes of the industry, I came to understand TV and how it works."
"This idea that, if you're a beautiful woman, you shouldn't show it is absurd."