novelists-from-italy

"I work because I need to have two thousand francs in my pocket every month, but I have no desire to glorify work either by enthusiasm or envy or emulation. Life is a mere waiting room in which we spend time before entering into the void. Who would think of working in a waiting room? While awaiting our turn we chat, we look at the pictures on the walls. But work? There is no point in it, if when our turn comes to go into the next room we shall no longer see anything."

"All those people who dance in basements to harrow each other's nerve endings think and they're enjoying themselves don't realise in their frenzy that they are passive instruments in the hands of nature, which provides them with the excitement of the dance in the interest of the reproduction of the species."

"A man tells you the most interesting things he knows during the first half hour he talks to you; after that he either repeats himself or offers you variations on the same theme."

"The alcoholic retains the ability to condemn his addiction and advise those not subject to it to avoid succumbing to the liquid poison. But the cocaine addict likes proselytizing; thus, instead of constituting a tangible warning, every victim of the drug acts as a source of infection."

"Nel collegio dei Barnabiti aveva imparato il latino, a servir messa ed a giurare il falso. Tre cose di cui si può aver bisogno da un momento all'altro. Ma uscendo dal collegio le dimenticò tutte e tre. Studiò medicina per alcuni anni; ma all'esame di patologia chirurgica gli dissero: «Non posso permetterle di dare l'esame con la caramella all'occhio. O si toglie la caramella o non dà l'esame» «Ebbene, io non dò l'esame» rispose Tito alzandosi. E rinunziò alla laurea."

"The mob loves those who amuse and serve it. But to amuse it you have to love it. I love no one, least of all the mob, because the mob, the multitude, are like women: they betray those who love them."

"He was forty, which is the most frightening age in life. You don't feel sorry for the old, because they are old already; you don't feel sorry for the dead, because they are dead already. But you do feel sorry for those approaching old age, those approaching death. Forty! At fairgrounds you see roller coasters dashing up a steep slope followed by a steep drop and then another ascent. At the top of the slope, or rather just before the top, the vehicle has used up all the energy it acquired in the descent and it slows down and hesitates as if the top were unattainable, as it it were terrified of the approaching plunge. The man approaching forty is in a similar state of hesitation and uncertainty; his pace slackens, he is paralyzed by the approaching summit and the descent he cannot see but knows lies just ahead."

"Conferences are assemblies of people who argue about how to conduct an argument and end by sending a telegram of congratulation to the minister."

"When I was twenty they told me to swear loyalty to the King, a person who acts in the capacity because his father and grandfather did the same before him. I took the oath because they forced my to, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. Then they sent me to kill people I didn't know who were dressed rather like I was. One day they said to me: "Look, there's one of your enemies, fire at him," and I fired, but missed. But he fired and wounded me. I don't know why they said it was a glorious wound."

"Jealousy is a fever that arises from a stupid, baseless excitement in our unthinking brain. Jealousy is a phenomenon of auto-suggestion. The woman you love has gone to bed with X. You hate X, you hate her, and you have perpetually before your eyes the vision of your loved one and X embracing in an act that fills you with horror. But you too in your time have deceived the woman you love and have done with Y what X did in bed with woman you love. Well, what remains in your skin ,your mind of Mrs Y? Nothing whatever. No more than X left with your woman. In other words, auto suggestion. Do you want evidence of that? Well, then, if you don't know the man, you imagine him to be hateful, offensive, repulsive, and you feel that if you met him you'd kill him. But, if you happen to see his photograph, you begin to realize that it's possible to look at him without horror; and believe me, if you were actually introduced to him you'd approach him with a cordial smile on your lips, look him in the eye without trembling and, if you have reached my degree of perfection, you'd actually be capable of cheerfully patting him on the back and telling him he's a good chap. In a not too distant future, reason and education will have driven home the lesson of the futility of jealousy. The day will come when our beloved children (the cuckolds of the future) will be prepared to be cuckolded and will no longer suffer for it, because we shall have inoculated them with commonsense and given them anti-cuckoldry injections."

"The height of perfection is mediocrity."

"Egli sapeva che le fanciulle cominciano con un ritardo di cinque minuti e finisco con i ritardi di quindici giorni e anche più. Tutta la morale sessuale non tende, in fondo, che a scongiurare, nelle fanciulle, il pericolo dei 'ritardi'."

"Not having a moustache, he was in the habit of twirling his eyebrows. “Why do you keep twirling your eyebrows?” a young lady asked him one day. “We all twirl the hairs we have, depending on our age and sex,” Tito replied. The young lady thought him very witty and fell in love with him."

"Women are like posters. One is stuck on top of another and covers it completely. Perhaps just for a moment, when the paste is still soft and the paper still wet and slightly transparent, you may still catch a vague impression of the splashes of color of the first, but soon there's no more trace of it. Then, when the second one is removed, both come away together, leaving your memory and your heart as blank as a wall."

"What a jester God is, Tito went on. No doubt it was He who created such blessings as water to make the grass grow, grass to fill animals' bellies, animals to fill men's bellies, women for men to keep, the serpent to cause trouble to both sexes, truffles to slice and serve with lobsters, the sun to dry washing, the stars to shine on poets, and the moon so that Neapolitan songs could be written about it. But it strikes me as strange that things should have emerged from nothing at the mere sound of their names. I think the Almighty likes parlor tricks and arranged the whole thing beforehand, that like a good conjurer He had His boxes with double bottoms and His glasses prepared in advance, and that His bravura in seeming to create everything out of nothing in six days was a piece of American-style ballyhoo designed pour épater les bourgeois."

"No, I don't want to commit suicide, but I should like to fade away and die gently. To depart from life as one gets out of a bath."

"We have to defend views we don't share and impose them on the public; deal with questions we don't understand and vulgarize them for the gallery. We can't have ideas of our own, we have to have those of the editor; and even the editor doesn't have the right to think with his own head, because when he's sent for by the board of directors he has to stifle his own views, if he has any, and support those of the shareholders."

"I've come to see that competitors are necessary to those who want to get on in the world. Opposition is indispensable to success."

"I met two or three men who were very kind to me. There was a magistrate who couldn't stand priests, and a priest who didn't have a good word to say for magistrates; and there was a landlord who let furnished rooms by the hour and spoke highly of both priests and magistrates, because both were his best clients."

"Mysticism was merely virility in a state of liquidation; sperm that had gone bad."

"[T]he distance between sympathy and sensuality is as short as that which separates those two words in the dictionary."

"“Andiamo meglio?" domandò il medico illustre prendendo il polso di Tito. “Andiamo meglio?”. "Sì. Andiamo.” E spirò."

"The understanding of women is keener and more quick than that of men."

"I'm apolitical. I only write about what I've seen and experienced, but someone who still dreams of black communism would prefer me dead. And if I had stayed in the country, I already would be. That's why I, my wife, and my four-year-old daughter sleep with a Kalashnikov next to our pillow. [...] The Carabinieri are very worried, and my family even more so. On Facebook they have written terrible things to me, some absurd (a guy who claims to have paid hitmen from the Russian mafia to eliminate me) others more credible."

"I've never studied Italian, I learned it through contact with people, reading children's books and watching cartoons. But now I can even tackle Dante."

"My values ​​are left-wing, but not as the left is defined in Italy. I am not someone who fits into an ideology within the Italian system. I know well that in Italy some say that I am a fascist, because they quote some out-of-context phrase, or some old position of mine. But the truth is that I am the product of the Soviet system, for better or for worse."

"Despite the fact that he [Volodymyr Zelenskyy] is from a Jewish family, and that his grandfather served in the Soviet army, he supports Nazism for money, for economic reasons."

"My only commitment is to block any kind of support for the war. I have no other political interests. I have never been seriously interested in any kind of political program."

"Actually, I now consider myself Italian in all respects. I have Italian citizenship, it would be wrong and incorrect to define myself as Russian, although I have recently received quite a few attacks from my former fellow Russian citizens."

"I'm fucking telling you, my friend ... All the fucking money is in the hands of the rich fucking Jews. I'm telling you, it's a fucking conspiracy. And did you know that the rich fucking Jews started the Second World War? I'm telling you for sure, those bitches didn't spare their own tribe, just to enrich themselves further! ... You've heard of this Bilderberg Club, right? Yeah, yeah, my friend explained everything about them really well. My friend, you know, Licio fucking Gelli, P2, know what I mean? ... When I arrived, I was a complete fool about this, but he opened my eyes."

"Have you ever seen Russia waging colonial wars or wars to expand its territory? [...] The Russians do not want to invade anyone. The only reason they wage war is to ensure the security of their borders. That is why Putin has moved his army into Ukraine, because since 1998 NATO military activities have been taking place there that threaten Russia's borders. It is idiotic to say that Putin wants to invade Poland and the Baltics. Putin wants to take it easy, he does not want to have a gun pointed at his face by NATO."

"The majority of Russians are happy and actually want to support this policy more. When we talk about protests by Russians who do not want to go to war, it is all bullshit. Russians want to go to war and they want to defeat Nazism."

"The war will not be short, it will be long, but Russia will be victorious for a simple reason: we are in the midst of a change in the world order. The West will no longer be able to extend its dominion and supremacy over a part of the world."

"Italian journalism and reporting [...] are all whores of the regime. I'm sorry but that's how it is. [...] when we talk about Italian newspapers, we are talking about scrap paper. Intellectual work in Italy no longer exists, coherence no longer exists. When you read something in the Italian press, it cannot be credible, period."

"The West is the cradle of the fucking Anglo-Saxon colonialists, profiteers, bankers and warmongers. The world now no longer believes in the bullshit of Western democracy. The whole world is now against the West."

"I work with news, on my private Telegram channel; therefore, I have people who pay me to be informed. If people pay to have coherent news, it means that many citizens do not agree with what the Italian media reports and it is not surprising, because the Italian press keeps telling a lot of bullshit. The Russian press is always based on a propaganda line. We must not think that in Italy they are propagandists and in Russia they tell the whole truth. There is propaganda there too, but there is a difference: Russian journalists do not distance themselves from the objective truth, which is what Westerners have started to do quite some time ago."

"The West has beauty, a great cultural heritage, and enormous potential, but it must free itself from Anglo-Saxon hegemony."

"It was ISIS in league with the Ukrainian Nazis. [...] But the order came from the CIA."

"I am an internationalist and I want to break down borders. I do not understand why the Eurasian continent should not be united. This wall is wanted by those who consider Europe as a subject and consumer of their products, that is, the United States. If the League acts as a battering ram to break down this barrier, I am willing to vote for it. Once the wall is gone, I can stop and look at all the ethical issues. What else can I do?"

"When I did military service in the sabotage squad and captured Islamic terrorists, we'd adopt a practice of preparation for interrogations which has always bothered me. [...] First of all we'd remove their trousers and underpants. Then we'd make a sort of gag with their socks which we'd stuff into their mouths. [...] I didn't get it at first. Then I asked our captain about it. [...] He explained that this practice had been studied by some psychologists, and that it served to deprive the prisoners of their own dignity, and therefore break them. So when we brought them before the interrogator, the terrorists would start talking immediately. It wasn't so hard to extract information from them at that point."

"If you read Wikipedia it seems that the Moldovans tried to re-annex Transnistria which in the meantime had proclaimed itself independent. It is half true. First of all, the Moldovans did not want to leave the Soviet Union. They left because some corrupt politicians, paid by Western oligarchs, destroyed the USSR. An army of mercenaries from all over the world arrived here: Hungarians, Germans, people from the Baltic countries. If the war lasted only two months it is precisely because the majority of the Moldovan people were against it and did not want to invade us. The greatest number of victims occurred during the first few days, when people were simply massacred while they tried to return home in fear. The first resistance, the most consistent, was popular. We kids rode the streets on bicycles and collected ammunition, we took weapons and other useful things from the dead. We followed the movements of military vehicles and reported them to the adults. It also happened that we fired Kalashnikovs in firefights. At that time the people in my building lived in my house because we had water from the well and several supplies of canned food. In the apartments there was no electricity, nor gas, they also cut off the water in the whole city because the mercenaries had tried to poison it. There were also several elderly people who needed medicine; in our courtyard we had a small refugee camp."

"It was like a concentration camp and I have bad memories because it was the first time I saw human beings lose everything, even dignity [...]. Thank God no one tried to hit me or put me down, there was no sexual violence towards me because our group stayed together, we made business with nobody and just tried to survive. I knew I never wanted to go back."

"To avoid further deaths and douse the fire of this civil war, Ukraine must cease to exist as a State. The government, law enforcement and the army which have stained themselves with crimes against humanity must be arrested and tried for their responsibility. NATO should be dissolved immediately, seeing as the bloc of nations comprising the Warsaw Pact hasn't existed for more than two decades. What's needed is a military intervention by the UN to disarm both sides involved in this war. The criminal Nazis of Kiev, their Washington collaborators and advisors should be brought before the International Court of Justice in Hague and judged with all the severity that the law allows. Only this way and only from that point on will true and coherent news start arriving from that scarred nation: only then will the world be able to breathe freely."

"The Soviet Union was unified through sacrifice and blood, millions of people died. My grandfather, even though he was anti-communist, always said that the greatest feat accomplished by the communists was to have united the Soviet Union and that we had to keep it united because it was our country. It was nice to be all together, to have one currency, one constitution, to be able to move freely..."

"I've killed quite a few people in Chechnya who had American passports."

"Mine was a criminal family. My grandfather robbed banks and my father armored vans. During the war my grandfather was a sniper, like almost all Siberian hunters; he was in the same convoy that took the great Vasily Zaytsev to Stalingrad. I'm often told that I had a bad childhood. Perhaps it's true, but I liked it that way. That element got me closer to the adults and I felt responsible."

"Not only have I never gone to school, but not even the Holden school, which keeps ignoring me anyway."

"I'm not pro-Russian, I'm Russian. I'm ethnically Russian. How the fuck can you call a Russian pro-Russian?"

"Boris Nemtsov was shot to death because he was a womanizer. He was obsessed with pussy and was unlucky enough to have slept with the young and beautiful wife of a Georgian businessman strongly linked to Moscow's organized crime. Do the math and you'll see that blaming the secret services is just strange."

"The [Second Chechen War] was caused by America's attempt to gain control of the Caspian Sea, this extraordinary energy reserve, a crucial geographic point for controlling all the former Soviet republics and Iran, where the viaducts transporting oil and gas run. To do so, they knew full well what the best tool was destabilizing Chechnya and Dagestan. The war in Chechnya began on the basis of this geopolitical premise: the United States' attempt to hold the Islamic Republic of Iran in check and seize Russia's historical territories. The forces in play at the time were the Russians, including the Chechens, and terrorists infiltrated by the CIA through a state that had sold itself to the Americans: Georgia."