Authors From Italy

"And they shot the singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori | on a night of youth, | they shot him out of love, | so he doesn't sing anymore. | They shot him because he was handsome | remember it as it was before | alternative, self-reduced | outside the system's perspective. (from Vaudeville (Last Cannibal World), n. 3, Side A)"

"Anger once marked her | only the locomotive | thrown a stone on the road; | now it's market day | poets emerge in clusters | all the islands have found. (from Song for Francesco, n. 2, Side B)"

"The poets are old gentlemen | that eat the stars | lying on the meadows | of their villas, | and they invent gypsies and blackberries | to make oneself credible in the eyes of the world | with their pain. (from The Poets)"

"And Marco Polo cheated them: | doge, wife, turkish, ideas, | he left Chioggia and arrived | no further down than Bari, | no further down than Bari, | then he said "I saw magical orientations", | but at least he had had some imagination; | the Venetians applauding | only envy and hypocrisy. (from Song for Laura)"

"And you take out half the camp, hundreds and hundreds of heads fly apart, only to take an inventory and then see that they are not your judges, they are oxen. (from Ajax)"

"He who has won is there who vomits his wine | and what ultimately matters is the intestine. (from Aiace)"

"How nice to have two talents, you only have to give back twenty; you just try to get a hundred and God is on your toes with the bill. (from Through the Eye of a Needle)"

"My Milan take me away, it's so cold, | I'm disgusted and I can't take it anymore, | let's make a change, take it | that little bit of money that little bit of celebrity | but give me back my six hundred, | my twenties and a girl you know | Milan sorry I was joking, | they won't turn on any more lights at San Siro. (from Luci a San Siro)"

"Lights at San Siro that evening | what's strange we've all been there, | do you remember the game in the fog? (from Luci a San Siro)"

"Gaber was simple and clear, he didn't shout truth but proposed ways. Also reporting the importance of pain, the need in life to overcome difficult trials. All things that the novels give us, and yet in a more direct way today they come to us precisely from the songs of the author. The quickest way to enter the contemporary. Which has always been Giorgio Gaber's aim: to sing the illogical joy of living reality."

"The true songwriter song is a synthesis of existence, said in an overall simple way. Because although some songs seem convoluted and difficult, two readings are always enough to understand them. Furthermore, the true songwriting does not want to propagate absolute truths, but paths, yes."

"For Gaber "reality is further ahead". It starts from contradictions, from internal contradictions that no one, or almost no one, usually underlines. His testimony therefore becomes first self-criticism, and then criticism of society. A much broader denunciation is made, and in fact Gaber will be able to continue it into the Eighties and Nineties. Moreover, the idea - fundamental even today - that we "believe" we are free while in fact we are "farmed chickens", could not have come from the political song à la Guccini nor from the anger of a Vasco. It could only come to an intellectual of song like Giorgio. The second pillar of the intellectualism of Italian song. The other is Fabrizio De André, who however made a more abstract argument. Gaber, on the other hand, specialized in reality, towards which he was ferocious, but never nihilist."

"The Gaber of the end of the Seventies knows two essential things. One: artistic life should not be thrown away. Two: the song isn't just something you sing in three minutes. It must enter into a discourse, into a dialogue that takes on even more live. Gaber understood that the song is not just an object to be sold, and since it brings people into people's homes it should be experienced together with these people. In a suitable place. And from these assumptions comes the bringing of the song to theatre, his greatest discovery. [...] Giorgio gives lightning importance to the words and concepts that he expresses with them. The music, although spot on, almost only dresses them up. What matters is the word, which becomes magical the moment fifteen hundred people are united in a theater listening to it."

"[You go to school] To become a person."

"I would ask the school first of all to teach what is beautiful, to spread harmony, to explain the meaning of values."

"If your child comes home and says they are upset, don't believe them, there are no teachers who upset them."

"I am Catholic, but as a boy going to Mass, in my opinion, was a waste of time. Then I realized that this was the place."

"Making sacrifices is a great key word."

"Boys have to work hard. Just pet them, kick their ass from an early age."

"We need to start over and do school, do it hard, with exams in September, meritocracy."

"This must give the school: the meaning, the meaning. Not only Humanism, that is, being used or simply helped by science, but also Humanism, that is, understanding the meaning, having the purpose."

"Today we discovered technology. But are we the masters or his servants?"

"There is no desire to be first in the world, to excel in the arts as well as in science and technology."

"I believe that beyond everything there is a wonderful plan in life that we almost never understand, because we usually consider the carpet on the side of the knots, not on the right side."

"I have studded my life, my publications, my records, with words addressed to God, with doubts, as can be seen in songs like "Blu moon", "What kind of God is there in the sky"," Tommy.""

"True faith is that which knows doubt, which seeks answers."

"faith does not make us waterproof, but it is a good shield, a good help."

"I believe that God works behind the scenes, never impeding the freedom of human beings, never forcing anyone to do things against their will."

"I feel God inside me very strongly. I would say that apart from some skirmishes today I am in a good moment with Him."

"I believe that everything that happens in the world, even what seems apparently inexplicable, is a millimeter of God's yardstick."

"Chino Alessi"

"Bologna maintains mysteries and has its own very metaphysical atmosphere despite being an earthly city. I think it is a city that lends itself very well to noir also because all the of porticoes on one side protect you from the sun and rain but also risk taking away the sky, the horizon, they are suffocating, claustrophobic protective. The Certosa, the cemetery, is the most open place in Bologna, from there you see everything, the plain, the hills. Even Lord Byron passing through Bologna said that the Certosa was the most open place in Bologna."

"We used to say the "fat Bologna" wanting to allude more than to the weight of the inhabitants, to their carnality, their love for good food and the healthy physiological consequences of this love. The "fat Bologna" was anything but the maze-like conventual world that Ugo Foscolo had perhaps seen in a moment of bad mood. (p. 7)"

"Bologna was beautiful, lovable, worthy of being enjoyed with soul and flesh. Behind the bright windows of the Zanichelli bookshop the eternally angry spirit of Carducci still hovered. (p. 10)"

"The great dates in Bologna were the «premieres» of the opera season at the Teatro Comunale, in autumn (the Bolognese public boasted, rightly, Wagnerian after a famous premiere in Lohengrin directed by Angelo Mariani) and at carnival, the «flower ball». (p. 10)"

"Rino Alessi, Hope beyond the river, Cappelli editore, Bologna 1959."

"Io parlo parlo ... ma chi m'ascolta ritiene solo le parole che aspetta. ... Chi comanda al racconto non è la voce: è l'orecchio."

"When Marco Polo traveled to the East and reported what he had seen, mixing truth with falsehood but in any event telling something of the truth, the men of the West refused to believe him. In the late Medieval Ages his account of his travels was viewed as a book of fables... It was as if occidentals were unable to believe in the reality of the marvels of the Orient."

"Non ho scritto neppure la metà delle cose che ho visto."

"The United Nations General Assembly: The greatest show on Earth, starring Barack Obama, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Muammar Gaddafi."

"Speaking frankly, I find it difficult to accept lessons on press freedom from The Times, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch."

"I call it "cut and paste journalism." It's very convenient, very easy, very useful. And very dishonest."

"Theology is just like sex, the art of penetrating the mystery."

"I prefer news without interviews to interviews without news."

"Pope Benedict XVI is working softly, slowly, often silently, unobtrusively, behind the scenes, mostly unseen. But he is working hard. I like the great job of reconciliation that he is doing inside the Roman Catholic Church: reconciliation between traditionalists and liberals, conservative and reform-oriented faithful, liturgical Latinists and Mass polyglots, old-time lovers and progressives, high-flying souls and pedestrian believers, thinkers and doers--Christians and Catholics. It is a hidden work of diplomacy, interactions, influences, concessions, agreements, acknowledgments. A "hard job" well done until now."

"The Anglican Church seems the Wonder Emporium of Mr Magorium."

"Believe it or not, after the Second Vatican Council anticlericalism is a Catholic virtue. In elaborating a theology of laity, as many call it, and speaking of a hierarchy of service rather than of domination in the Church, Vatican II implicitly endorsed opposition to clericalism, which is a policy of maintaining or increasing the power of a religious hierarchy. Clearly, this sort of anticlericalism has nothing to do with the other anticlericalism."

"Suffering from an evident complex of moral inferiority, a lot of journalists are interested in teaching the Pope how to do the Pope. Suffering from an evident complex of moral superiority, a lot of priests are interested in teaching journalists how to do journalism. But the worst of all are the journalist-priests."

"What evil is there in seeing a man possess a woman? Why, the beasts would be more free than we! It seems to me that that which is given us by nature for our own preservation ought to be worn round the neck as a pendant and in the hat for a medal."

"I love you and, because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies."