"In this night sown with clouds that not a light trembles, every question is the answer to a question of the first answer; every return is a false start, the illusion of a movement, like this bath of tears that I have not cried. (from Night song (of a wandering shepherd of the air))"

"Because I will fight for you with an army of plumbers, condominium owners, dentists, pain in the ass and shopkeepers. I will cover myself with the wounds of boredom, the ones that no one sees and that never bleed. (from Portrait of a Lady in Pink Satin, n. 9)"

"And he built a delirious universe without love, where all things are tired of existing and gaping pain. (from The Love Letters)"

"But it escaped him that the sense of the stars is not that of a man, and he saw himself again in the pain of that useless shining, that distant shining... . (from The Love Letters)"

"Everything you cry is not love. (from Euridice)"

"[...] it is more difficult for you to move your existence a little lower than the sky and become a man. (from Portrait of a Lady in Pink Satin, n. 9)"

"This time I'm really leaving | with a light wind | blowing behind me. | You sleep your sleep well | they know where I'm going | only the stars. (from The City Without Women)"

"Now I see that words act in an unpredictable way, and that you shouldn't believe what you see."

"But as long as I sing I have you in front of me, the years are just moments, you have always been here in front of me. (from I miss you)"

"And the greatest conquered nation after nation | and when he was in front of the sea he felt like an idiot | because nothing further could be conquered | and a long way to see a desperate sun | and always the same and always as when he left . (from Stranamore (this too is love), Side A, nº 1)"

"Don't leave me alone this night when I can't see the sky, come back bandolero. (from El Bandolero Tired)"

"Away, away, other roads, other seas, a different sky of unknown stars: so that even the stars do not know me, do not know who I am."

"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)"

"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)"

"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)"

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

"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)"

"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)"

"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)"

"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."

"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)"

"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."

"There I also met an old bard, Homer who blinded himself to stay in the dream. (from The Last Show, n. 3, Side B)"

"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."

"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."

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

"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)"

"Making sacrifices is a great key word."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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.""

"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."

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

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

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

"But you didn't talk to me | and my ideas like lizards | they withdrew their heads | inside the wall, when it's late | because it is cold, because it is dark: | and a thousand solitudes | and the holes to hide... (from The Last Show, n. 3, Side B)"

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

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

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

"Words are not breath, evanescence, convention. Words are "things". Nothing exists if it has no name, because we are the ones who make the world exist."

"Words are things in constant dramatic transformation and a mirror of our struggle in search of light."

"The Italian of the past runs the risk of becoming an aesthetic object that quickly runs out when approaching reality."

"The Italian, will soon be the most beautiful of the dead languages."

"All this sea of song of art needs not only the spectacular moment (stage, exhibition, reproduction) but also codification, interpretation, exegetical insertion into culture."

"I wouldn't write Samarkand today. I don't believe in destiny at all, I believe in human will and freedom."

"In this song we talk about universal love, for all things and for creation."