Non Fiction Authors From Italy

"Sometimes you lose because you didn't choose the right field of trial."

"Happiness lies in the courage to challenge oneself, to demand something from one's destiny without letting it run its course without our contribution. (p. 66)"

"Every ideology or religious faith should be oriented toward the attainment of happiness, because it is the only way to allow for the hope that tomorrow will be better than today, and not just the same. Then there would not be so many followers and faithful ready to sacrifice themselves in the trenches of the “just cause”; churches would remain deserted and politics would be only an exercise in good government that would not make anyone's fortune. (p. 49)"

"Unhappiness is a swamp where only surrender and renunciation dwell."

"Happiness is like a train without a timetable: one comes along every now and then. You cannot predict its arrival, nor know when it will leave again. Your job is to go to the station."

"We sell them weapons, because the disease of power has spread everywhere, and they throw away every resource, even human lives, to wage and win wars, wars of misery."

"My profession has taught me that the most difficult and improbable thing is to change. Yet the pursuit of happiness lies not in preserving, but in the courage to change the course of events."

"The tendency to avoid experiences of fatigue and pain influences all forms of emotion. This leads straight to the most terrible form of anesthesia: indifference."

"In 1950-51, Maxwell Jones invented, as an alternative to psychiatric hospitals, small therapeutic communities made up of patients and psychiatric and social workers, managed on the basis of collective participation and dynamics that were intended to bring out the abilities and qualities of each individual. The model of the extended family or village will go beyond psychiatry to apply to the problems of marginalization (from prisoners to drug addicts, the disabled, and the elderly). (La società o la fabbrica della follia, p. 131)"

"Madness is an integral part of culture, and the madman is a citizen of society, even when he is confined to an asylum. It is not possible to understand madness by dealing only with madness. On the other hand, one cannot have a complete picture of a society without the chapter on its madness. (Intorno alla follia, p. 62)"

"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."

"Vittorino Andreoli, Tra un'ora, la follia, Rizzoli, 1999."

"Even for history there is a “principle of indeterminacy” and here too, in defining some facts, one must give up describing others. The impression arises that many accounts of a historical period are possible depending on what one chooses and consequently eliminates. And it is impossible to tell a story without making choices. (Intorno alla follia, p. 63)"

"Frank Wedekind, actor and playwright, focuses his performances on sex and its perversions with the aim of exposing the hypocritical respectability of the bourgeoisie of the time. He proposes the morality of erotic impulse as an alternative to bourgeois morality. (Intorno alla follia, p. 79)"

"While scientific discoveries, however great, may not have immediate repercussions on lifestyle and daily life, it is precisely technology that brings about immediate practical upheavals, usually considered positive. Science always changes ideas (of science itself or of culture), while technology has little impact on them and mostly only indirectly through the subversion of ordinary processes of existence. (Intorno alla follia, p. 70)"

"The name Gustave Le Bon recalls that of Gabriel Tarde, who in 1890 published ‘'The Laws of Imitation’' and argued that the psychological phenomenon of imitation can explain all forms of social bonding and all the secrets of social life. With Tarde, the sociological dispute was already alive. It was this author, in contrast to the dominant sociologist of the time, Émile Durkheim, who claimed that the era of non-psychological sociology (that of Durkheim, in fact) was over. If Auguste Comte is the founder of sociology, Tarde deserves credit for founding social psychology. (Intorno alla follia, p. 65)"

"Vittorino Andreoli, Preti. Viaggio fra gli uomini del sacro, Piemme, 2010. ISBN 9788856615197"

"Sexuality is also dying. Once upon a time, the penis had great significance and could be an ideological foundation. Today, it is an appendage of the body without qualities. No plans are made for the penis anymore. It is an intriguing and dangerous organ. It can generate in an overpopulated world. Better the power of an engine. Impotence has never been as high as in the contemporary world. You are male because of your motorcycle, your tattoo, your abdominal muscles, and your beard; the penis has nothing to do with it. (Requiem per la verità, p. 335)"

"Paul Feyerabend described science as a place of anarchy based not on logical-rational method but on protocols, the tools of the trade. Science is, therefore, a ‘relative’ discipline, capable of affirming truth only in relation to data conventionally compared: a truth-error. (Requiem per la verità, p. 334)"

"Falsification is a term that has entered everyday language. It was introduced by Karl Popper. Every scientific result must be questionable and, therefore, imperfect, the starting point for new experiments for progressive, but never definitive, perfection. Scientific research is the never-ending story of corrections to previously obtained data, a story that has the limits of Tantalus. The definitive is dogmatism; it can be asserted but not proven. The great system of Bacon and Galileo has been decisively destroyed, precisely in the method that founded it. (Requiem per la verità, p. 333-334)"

"Vittorino Andreoli, I miei matti, Rizzoli, 2004."

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

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

"Vittorino Andreoli, L'uomo di vetro, Rizzoli, 2008."

"[...] 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?"

"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."

"Vittorino Andreoli, Un secolo di follia, Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, Milano, 1998. ISBN 88-17-11838-9"

"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."

"(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."

"We are experiencing a strange paradox: no one can say they are lonely anymore, yet we all, to some extent, feel and fear that we are."

"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."

"People need guidance, and when they can't find it, they invent it. We need an instruction manual for life. But then the instructions are so simple and obvious that one wonders: why don't people follow them? We're not talking about Einstein's insights here."

"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'm not a magician, but I don't think it all happened that night; outbursts only happen in comic books. You don't become a wolf overnight."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"(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."

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

"You should learn that life, like love, is the only business whose balance sheet must end in the red: you have to give everything without calculating what you get in return."

"True travelers are not rich people but curious ones. They are not looking for comfort, but for novelty and surprises."

"Paolo Crepet, Dannati e leggeri, Einaudi, Torino, 2004. ISBN 88-06-17246-8"

"[The British] never talk. Instead, we talk even when we listen to music or read the newspaper."

"In their own way, non-believers are frequent visitors to churches: they love them as intimate places, as special museums where they can admire art and music, but there they find themselves wondering about the miracle of that presence which, after two thousand years, still fills the whole earth and the lives of so many people."

"All it takes is a hundred people willing to die as suicide bombers, strapping explosives to themselves, to render ridiculous the system of certainty and the certainty of power on this earth, of the potentates of this world."

"The non-believer is someone who feels the limits of their own existence, and who, while using reason and considering it the best way to solve many existential problems, and certainly as a scientific tool, wants to push it further to question the mystery."

"I believe that the perception of being children of God, not in the sense of a statement of principle but of an experience that attests to their involvement, must be an extraordinary existential condition, capable of giving strength and removing many of the doubts and disappointments that the human condition activates and feeds."

"[Second symptom of Italy's mental illness] Ruthless individualism. And mind you, I mean this adjective. Because a certain amount of individualism is normal, one must have one's own identity to which one attaches esteem. But when it becomes ruthless..."