All Quotes

"I used to maintain that if it couldn't be put into words it didn't exist; if anything I believe rather the opposite now."

"Well, I'm neither one thing nor the other particularly. I suppose I'm gay. But I don't really identify with it much... I've never said I was gay, and I've never said I wasn't... What I'm trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else."

"One scarcely knows to whom to complain."

"Where earlier historians saw cause to decry the market’s rise, and to claim that negative position for American republicans, she heard past voices speak with optimism and courage about the new economic order, which spawned opportunity for some and hardship, even slavery, for others. Although her work illustrates the strength and interrelatedness of democratic and commercial institutions, Joyce never forgets to chronicle the oppression."

"She is so untortured about knowing her loves and likes, so guiltless about her enjoyment of people, books, ideas, films, works of art, theories, and texts as daunting as Kant or Peirce or as esoteric as the philosophy of science. She devours the stuff, hashes it over with you (even if you are clueless), forms a judgment, then perversely alters it to see if the opposite makes more sense or changes her mind just to get your goat."

"True to her egalitarianism, Joyce regards pretension at home and abroad as insufferable. Unfailingly charming to farmer and colleague alike, in her heart she does not suffer fools or knaves gladly. She regularly writes to tyrants, potentates, or politicians telling them of the errors of their ways."

"I entered the seminary at the age of eleven, in 1947 after the war, because they saw at home that I wanted to study. At that time, in peasant families, when a son wanted to study, his parents would say that this boy must become a priest or a solicitor. At the seminary, we performed sacred plays, and since I played dramatic roles, the rector got angry because people laughed when I said my lines. So I realised that my vocation was not to be a priest, but to make people laugh."

"Tenacity, tenacity to the max, especially in these times of crisis. Put on blinders like I did and say, “What the heck”: I'll suffer, I'll do a lot of things, but one day I'll get to do what I want. And if you want it, you'll do it."

"(About Lilli Carati) We called her the “velvet doll” because she was petite, not very tall and very beautiful. She had a well-proportioned body and was very sensual. [...] When we acted together, she was very young, while I was in my thirties or forties. She wasn't just beautiful, she was one of the few talented actresses of the time. Many of the girls who played those roles were foreigners, they were talented, but they had to struggle with the language. Each had a different kind of sensuality. She spoke well, she was very smart. I think she was also cultured, because she expressed herself correctly and demonstrated a certain level of education."

"I really like Renato Zero: he is a great artist, and he confirmed this to me in Venice, if ever there was any need. He knows how to hold the stage, he has that extra something that makes him great, beyond what he sings and what he says. I don't know him very well as a person, but in Venice he was very affectionate and kind to my daughter Michela, and so he won me over completely. He's not pretentious, he's sensitive, elegant, in short, I like him a lot."

"Fini should get lost. He's not part of the PDL. If he wants to leave, let him go."

"(About Mikīs Theodōrakīs) He was the greatest composer of Mediterranean music of the twentieth century: by Mediterranean, I mean the entire tradition of the countries bordering that sea, including our own. His notes were and are the essence of that spirit, of that soul."

"I am not diplomatic. For the sake of humour, I say anything. And then I regret it."

"The market pays. And then you get a lot of spring onions and cherries. A Neapolitan man in Pioltello gave me a fish. He started shouting: ‘Zanicca! Zanicca! Vote for Zanicca’. [During the campaign for the 2004 European elections]"

"You other men are lucky... until you're ninety... I'm over sixty, I'm done."

"Ours is a strange job. If you work, you earn money; if you don't work, you don't."

"I didn't have a very high fee. But I had sponsors. For ten years, I advertised mattresses. In the end, I looked like a mattress."

"She's not a turncoat, but what happened to her is monstrous. Today's Pivetti, all leather and studs, bald and with her boobs out, looks like the daughter of the one in the Chamber with her scarf and suit."

"(About Pippo Baudo) He's someone who works hard and well. A great professional, but as a person he's rubbish."

"I had a moment of weakness at the end of my marriage and cheated on my husband. I still congratulate myself. It was the first time I had fallen in love. But no important lovers. I had many important suitors."

"(About Roberto Benigni) He said defamatory things about me and Berlusconi. [Live from Sanremo with the programme L'Italia allo specchio, in the episode aired on 20 February 2009]."

"I was treated in an indecent, unseemly manner by Mr Benigni. He said some monstrous things. (Live from Sanremo with the programme La vita in diretta, Intervento a La vita in diretta, 20 February 2009()."

"LAWSON CYPRESS}} ... This is found in Oregon and California. The majority of trees grow below 3000 feet and are at their best growing about 3 to 15 miles from the coast. It is sometimes found associated with , , , and , but often forms unmixed colonies."

". Cupressus Lawsoniana.—This we consider one of the greatest acquisitions that has been made for many years to our list of hardy s. Its foliage resembles the , but its habit is that of the . As a lawn tree, or for association and planting near water, or in cemeteries where there is room, its beauty of foliage and form renders it in every way desirable. There is a variety of this called Pyramidalis, that is more dense and upright, but to us not as beautiful."

"Port-Orford-cedar (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana) ... is the largest species of its and the largest representative of the Cupressineae in North America. It is a highly valued because of the durability, excellent machinability, light weight, strength, and shock resistance of the wood. It is also valued worldwide as an ."

"The Japanese import Port-Orford-cedar as a substitute for their native , which for centuries has been the favorite wood of Japanese builders and craftsmen. It is highly valued in their woodenware, novelty, and toy industries. Another major use is for construction and repair of s and ."

"' is a water-borne invasive root pathogen that is currently affecting Port Orford cedar in riparian zones. Once a tree near a stream is infected the pathogen spreads rapidly down the stream."

"An exotic fungal forest pathogen, ', first identified in the Pacific Northwest in 1923, eventually spread throughout much of the Port-Orford-cedar tree’s native range, killing significant amounts of this valuable timber species on high risk sites. In 1997, the started a Port-Orford-cedar breeding program to increase resistant varieties of this tree to be replaced in areas of its native range."

"(About the album entitled L'albero delle Fate) In my mind, the L'Albero delle Fate is a tree that we should all climb to reach the highest branch and pick the most beautiful, most important fruit. All adults should strive to rediscover the Tree of Fairies. It is, if you like, a metaphor for the imagination we have as children but lose as we grow up. Without imagination, man is nothing."

"My roots are important. I think of a blank sheet of paper on which I draw a dot with a pencil. It is essential to be able to recognise oneself in a more general context. But if globalisation means taking into account the positive aspects of many realities, I continue to be Lucano, but I am open to what others can teach me. Therefore, as someone once said, I become a citizen of the world without losing the link with my origins."

"I am a believer in my own way: I cannot believe that everything is born and ends, otherwise life would have no reason to exist; I do not bother with divinities, I believe first and foremost in man. I do not choose this or that confession: religions create too many prejudices."

"My relationship with communication is good in some ways and disastrous in others. Those who participate in Sanremo, for example, have four minutes to tell you a little about their world. Television is a truly absurd medium, capable of destroying any type of artist."

"In Gaber, the solidarity between words and sound becomes a gesture and a place in which to push the song: and thus Teatro Canzone is born, intelligent cabaret made up of sound and satire, daily tears and ancestral smiles, artistic paintings and popular songs. With Giorgio Gaber, words traverse the space of life and passionately engage in dialectical encounter with the voice of the heart: just like those who know that words are silk pyjamas, and the night is the altar that takes on their contours."

"Words take up our fears and certainties, organising them in such a way as to give them a completely new life and colour: from time to time, they precipitate and climb them like new rural and urban destinies, as if they were mists drowned by the sun and distributed over the heads of real and uncertain men."

"(About Giorgio Gaber) A multifaceted artist to the point of confusing and mixing within himself his being a great actor and great singer, and then a mime, and then a subtle reciter, and then again a man with an unmistakable vocal timbre, marked like the brushstrokes of a great painter."

"I hate covers and the term “cover” because it means remaking songs. It's a concept that will never work because the comparison with the original, rightly considered untouchable, is inevitable, and it's also a bit stupid to make comparisons [...]. I try to discover the core of songs and make them my own with my style."

"He had a heavenly, world-class voice: if he had been born in a country other than Italy, he could have been even more successful. But he was happy at home, in Lagonegro. He was a quiet guy [...] Italian music has lost something very important, something he perhaps never fully understood. His full potential was never realised."

"I started out in the 1980s singing “Lei Verrà” in piano bars. It was one of the songs that gave me the chance to start my musical career. The news of his death is shocking. Mango will always be remembered as a great artist, because death cannot silence a voice and a song."

"I have always respected Mango, a virtuoso and decent singer, always on stage performing his art, right up to the end."

"Mango's death is one of the most touching moments I can remember. An artist who feels ill on stage, apologises to the audience for the disturbance before dying is absolutely incredible. Of course, Mango's style was far from mine, but I wanted to celebrate the person, the artist who was true to himself until the very last minute, with incredible respect for his audience."

"I didn't know him very well personally. I met him a few times, but I was enchanted by his talent and his unique voice. I saw many of his concerts. Once, at the Sistina in Rome, I was in the audience and at the end his brother Armando, whom I knew better, approached me and took me to his dressing room to meet him. I went in and saw him putting his things in a bag. He smiled at me and shook my hand with simplicity and warmth. My village is 19 km from his, which made him my closest idol. I adore his songs, his inimitable style, his notes that pierce the glass of my soul like diamonds."

"But why, in Italy, does a great artist have to die before he is recognised?"

"One of the most beautiful voices in the Mediterranean."

"He was a generous artist. He had a kind heart and exceptional sensitivity, as all of Italy saw when he felt ill on stage. He was a true Lucanian, a different kind of artist with a unique quality that cannot be found even in other great artists."

"If you listen to Mango's records now, you realise that he is a world number one."

"Mango was a unique case in Italian pop music: he was able to combine refined melodies with a touch of vocal experimentalism and a sprinkling of ethnic influences, without losing sight of rock or singer-songwriter music, genres from which he always carefully avoided drawing any effects, chords or practices that were in any way predictable."

"Metaphorically speaking, one could say that Mango plays the part of an elf who moves nimbly and stealthily in a complex architectural environment, without knocking over the crystal glassware whose exact location only he knows, in a very pictorial and never banal vocal-instrumental ensemble. In his case, one can speak of “a voice that becomes an instrument with special modulations”."

"I'm not interested in a khaki nation. You will never see me in sweats."

"It's about the dream. I get this image in my head of what I want to wear. It comes to me and I execute."

"Emotional, risk-taking. I'm not afraid to make mistakes. For me, clothes are an emotional journey, and my emotions shift and they change."