Non Fiction Authors From Italy

"Vittorino Andreoli, Lettera a un adolescente, Rizzoli, 2004."

"Vittorino Andreoli, Preti di carta. Storie di santi ed eretici, asceti e libertini, esorcisti e guaritori, Piemme, 2010."

"(About Romanzo criminale) It contributes significantly to helping people not to think, to turn their attention to other things, and that is why the literary and then cinematic product is successful."

"Parents need only ask themselves one simple question: if a boy or girl has never wanted for anything, how will they know the need to build something for their own future?"

"There is a psychological problem, not a legal one: you are mothers, and I don't need to tell you that those nine months are not just a matter of biological growth. There are thousands of studies that show that an emotional bond is established between the mother and the baby in her womb. [...] Women who ask others to carry on with the pregnancy for them? Horrible, Nazism, pure Nazism. You talk about the rights of adults and not the rights of children."

"The success of these television series, like all films about the mafia or evil in general, can be explained by one simple fact: they attract us because each of us is somehow drawn to evil, but they comfort us and lull us to sleep because they are fiction."

"We must give children back their playtime, not put smartphones in their cribs to distract ourselves. I am tech-savvy and in favor of technology, but not as a tool to relieve us of our responsibility for education. Andrea Camilleri wrote a wonderful book a few years ago, L'enciclopedia dei giochi per l'infanzia (“The Encyclopedia of Children's Games"), and Sicily, in its essence, could be a great pedagogical laboratory that bucks the trend. I say this about Sicily, but I could say it about Venice or Naples, about all those places that have an immense cultural heritage."

"They are wrong to always justify their children. Are the kids doing badly at school? Poor things. Do they get a failing grade? It's the teachers' fault. Do they fail? Appeal to the TAR. We have created children who do not know frustration, who do not know that ‘no’ also exists."

"[...] it happened in Veneto, one of the most productive and wealthy areas of the country, in what has been called the engine of Italy. It did not happen in a suburb of the South, catalogued with the usual blah-blah. [...] It is proof that violence and prejudice against women have nothing to do with what the usual four sociologists say. Here we are in the heart of the Northeast. There are villas, well-kept gardens, a world we thought was privileged. And happy. But no. We have money, but not happiness. There are young people who cannot distinguish between feelings: how can you talk about love when you make forty phone calls to a girl?"

"I tried to do it on my own. For a while, I thought I had succeeded, and I was even pleased with myself. Then I felt myself slipping. I didn't fall, but, unseated, it was as if my foot had remained trapped in a stirrup and my body was forced to drag itself along, wounded and helpless. Every day my resistance crumbled more and more: I lived in the nightmare that this creaking would overwhelm what was left of me at any moment. (p. 66)"

"Instead of playing with toy trains in the attic, he plays with satellites orbiting the Earth. He's as brilliant as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Now it seems to me that something is making him a little too euphoric... But when a man, from Caesar onwards, passing through Napoleon, thinks he wants to take over the world, at that precise moment he becomes something I don't like: a dictator. Sooner or later, some actor will re-enact the scene of Charlie Chaplin kicking the globe, this time dressed not as Hitler but as Musk."

"Seduction begins with a mole, or rather a difference, something that distinguishes uniqueness. The actresses who have left an indelible mark on our memory are those who had some small flaw: feminine (and masculine) perfection leaves no impression and causes no disturbance; it may work for a photograph or an advertisement, but not for the construction of a myth."

"At the beginning of my career, I was too drastic and perhaps I didn't understand that there's an age for everything. I can afford to do certain things today because I see them from a higher hill, which allows me to broaden my view of things and bring a little more wisdom to bear. I am sometimes criticized for my excesses, my hyperactivity, and I think that criticism is fair, even if in the end it has brought good things, because otherwise I would be just one of many today. And then they accuse me of being blunt, of often taking too clear-cut positions: that too must come with life. I was born to have opinions, but at a certain age, you reach a point where you can speak your mind."

"It is love that acts like a disease, but it works in reverse: it is good when it infects, it kills when it heals."

"(About the television program Belve) What's interesting about it? They've never invited me, and I would never go. Fagnani may be cute, but it's the fault of those who make the program that they have to look for the time you slipped on a banana peel: pure desperation. And teenagers see that we are ruthless. The trash TV we talked about years ago was the precursor to this; now it's animalistic television, in fact they're called “Belve” (Beasts) and “Iene” (Hyenas). There's nothing human about it."

"Rudeness in the age of the Internet and technology seems to know no bounds: everything seems to be permitted, respect for others is now an obsolete concept, a habit of old gentlemen resting in some country cemetery."

"I am afraid of the life my daughter will have. I can count young people who are great travelers on the fingers of one hand. No one cares that you went to Peru: they're much more interested in someone who takes a selfie with a heart-shaped pout. Today, artistic expression has been reduced to zero, unless you consider dipping a biscuit in your latte to be art, perhaps tagging the bakery so you can get free cappuccinos for the next three months."

"Paolo Crepet, Cuori violenti. Viaggio nella criminalità giovanile, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1995. ISBN 88-07-17005-1"

"And if tomorrow our children can finally live in a world where a computer can be absolutely competitive with human intelligence, what will be their task and their destiny? To control megacomputers or be controlled by them?"

"Friendliness applied to teaching has a relaxing effect on teachers, as it makes them feel magically irresponsible: authority is tiring and must be constantly reaffirmed, while this decadent form of equality requires no effort."

"Friendship arises from life's opportunities, often from fate, but to become an indispensable feeling, it needs to be based on shared emotions, not emotional mediocrity."

"Paolo Crepet, Gli incontri sbagliati, Mondadori, Milano, 2005. Supplemento a Donna Moderna."

"Hold your head high and don't set limits on your ambition: limits are there to be overcome through passion and ability. It's not true that you have to accept yourself in life; rather, it's essential to know that you can improve yourself, whatever season you're going through."

"The task of a psychiatrist is to accompany growth, to accompany pain and not erase it; if anything, they must try to ensure that the damage is not repeated, that it does not sprout a weed that infests one's entire existence."

"Each of us has the right to think that life is a long road, where you can and must try, make mistakes, and try again."

"Paolo Crepet, Impara a essere felice, Einaudi, Torino, 2013. ISBN 978-88-06-21261-2"

"Just like boredom, melancholy is a fundamental human feeling, a companion on the road to solitude."

"I, on the other hand, stayed. It's true that there is a certain age difference between me and my sisters, yet I couldn't free myself from that burden as they had done, without regrets, without guilt. I remained, tenacious or determined, but always with hatred; a hatred that I deluded myself into thinking was directed only at him, at the other, but which instead silently sank into me, too deep inside. I remained attached to that poisoned root as if my confusion had knocked me out. Then, as if my senses had suddenly awakened, I took revenge: I don't know exactly what for, since it was my weakness that made me stay. This compulsion was sick, I knew that all too well. It was a morbid and perverse bond that forced me to exaggerate just as my father had done with his sexual harassment. (p. 17)"

"Without culture, there is no freedom, no choice. There is no social growth, nor real well-being."

"If you give a child everything, you take away what is essential: desire, the fundamental feeling needed to build passion."

"Perhaps, in these years of prosperity, what has been most lacking are lofty figures and examples, such as the magnificent ones that past generations knew."

"I wonder: is it possible that no entrepreneur has ever reflected on the simple fact that temporary work produces a temporary identity, which is the opposite of the idea of a profession based on passion and merit, which is the only guarantee of quality performance and high productivity?"

"School should teach us how to be alone, to live our passions, to put emotions at the center of our lives."

"It is not television or the Internet that causes discomfort to children and adolescents, but rather a certain unwillingness on the part of adults to be there for them."

"Many of us thought, or deluded ourselves, that certain words, certain achievements, could be forever, imperishable, carved by our fathers on the stone of our most glorious history. One of these, the most important, we even took for granted: freedom."

"The teenager does not know who they have been and fears that they will not be able to become what they dream of being: self-awareness is the result of a long, complex confrontation between precarious stages of one's identity, and the group allows one to reflect oneself in others, to learn to recognize oneself and others."

"As long as there is thought, there is dignity, and as long as there is the courage to be concerned, there is freedom."

"Mediocrity annihilates, flattens, makes everyone the same. Imagination and dreams highlight our inner resources, that is, our very secret of living."

"In the United States, no economic magnate has ever left this world without first naming a foundation, university, museum, or theater after himself. Here, multimillionaires rush to hide their money in some tax haven to keep it available for their children (who will thus grow up to be boors and multimillionaires)."

"Music, as Maestro Claudio Abbado said, is not important for children to become musicians, but to teach them to listen and, consequently, to be listened to."

"Good ideas in education cost nothing, except the courage to have them and want to implement them."

"The anthropological change in parents and grandparents therefore risks weighing on an already dramatic identity crisis among educators."

"The first and most immediate response that a parent tends to give when faced with an episode of obvious intemperance on the part of their child is to defend them, contravening the most basic rule of educational common sense."

"The word “[work] flexibility” has become synonymous with “exploitation.” The laws that created it have been used by public and private managers to have thousands of young workers at their disposal at low cost, who can be blackmailed on a daily basis simply by waving the specter of termination of their employment contract."

"Fill your computer screen with your own ideas, not those of others."

"[...] what the crisis teaches us is that now more than ever we need to go back to thinking, planning, and experimenting."

"Reins are not coercive tools, but fundamental pedagogical instruments, just like a rider's spurs. Reins control the most exuberant impulses, while spurs encourage the rider to dare to overcome obstacles, or rather, their own limits."

"Believing in oneself means having faith in others, and therefore in the possibility of relationships, love, help, and solidarity."

"The ritual of giving is complex; sometimes it is done spontaneously, other times the gift masks a need for blackmail: giving is not free, it always requires something else in return."

"As long as Western man lived in poverty, he needed to know that he was not alone, and the network of relationships and mutual dependencies was a necessity; but as soon as development distributed some small economic privileges, complicity and solidarity—that is, the awareness that alone we are nothing—became obsolete words, symbols of submission, relics of a time that must be erased from the present, in which the most radical self-sufficiency is exalted. And with it, the never truly dormant sense of one's own superiority."