Anne Fortier Quotations

I was in Siena and decided I wanted to write a story set there. Then I discovered that the original story of Romeo and Juliet was set in Siena. It occurred to me that this was too much of a gift - I had to do it. That's how I ended up writing a parallel story to Romeo and Juliet.

After the dress rehearsal that afternoon, someone had misplaced the vial of poison, and for lack of better, Romeo would have to commit suicide by eating Tic Tacs.

...it is fifty percent what they see, and fifty percent what they think they see.

But he is an Italian," was Umberto's sensible reply. "He doesn't care if you break some law a little bit, as long as you wear beautiful shoes. Are you wearing beautiful shoes? Are you wearing the shoes I gave you?...principessa?" I looked down at my flip-flops. "I guess I'm toast.

Think about it. He drinks poison. What kind of man drinks poison? She is the one who stabs herself with his dagger. The manly way.

You owe me nothing, but I want everything.

I did not know my soul until I saw it's reflection in your eyes.

Don't underestimate the power of events that happened a long time ago. That is the tragic flaw of modern man.

It's what we call a dolce pazzia... a sweet madness. Once you feel it, you will never want to leave it.

I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, “at nine o’clock. Don’t open your door to anyone else.” “Not even my balcony door?” “Especially not your balcony door.

Romeo was cute …” “Cute?” Alessandro rolled his eyes. “What kind of man is cute?” “… and an excellent dancer …” “Romeo had feet of lead! He said so himself!” “… but most importantly,” I concluded, “he had nice hands!

She had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all of her favorite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps waiting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time.

There is lust and then there is love. They are related, but still very different things. To indulge in one requires little but honeyed speech and a change of clothes; to obtain the other, by contrast, a man must give up his rib. In return, his woman will undo the sin of Eve, and bring him back into Paradise.

For as long as I could remember, he had never worn a single piece of clothing that could be considered casual. Khaki shorts and golf shirts, to Umberto, were the garments of men who have no virtues left, not even shame.

as a bird swoops down on it's prey, and assumes this land bound wretch into heaven, so did romeo steal her lips before they fled him again. suspended somewhere between cherubs and devils, his quarry ceased to buck, and he spread his wings wide and let the rising wind carry them off across the sky, until even the predator himself had lost every hope of returning home. within that one embrace, [he] became aware of a feeling of certainty he had not thought possible for anyone - even the virtuous. with her in his arms, all other women, past, present, and future, simply ceased to exist.

You were right and I was wrong. When life hurts more than death, it is not worth living.

Perhaps. But the firstborn of hope is tragedy.

By the time we left college, I had become my own image: a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Kinda cute, but still a weed.

...and whether or not we had now paid our dues, he was my blessing, and I was his...

There is a trick to flying. The angels told me." He had smiled at my wide-eyed awe. "You need to forget everything you know as a human being. When you are human, you discover that there is great power in hating the earth. And it can almost make you fly. But it never will." I had frowned, not quite understanding him. "So, what's the trick?" "Love the sky.

Janice used to say that instinct was reason in a hurry; I was not so sure about the reason part.

While at Oxford in 1999, I met Jonathan Fortier, who is a Montreal-born Canadian. Despite the challenges of a transatlantic relationship, we remained keen on each other and eventually married in 2002.

Who is more amateurish, more vulnerable---those who rely on machines that need to be plugged in, or logged on, or in some other way connected in order to be more than a useless slab of plastic ... or those who have learned to master life without?

We are all cups, and our destiny is poured according to measures we cannot understand, cannot influence.

A novel is, hopefully, the starting point of a conversation, one in which the author engages readers and asks that they see things from a different point of view than they might otherwise.

I wish I had the power to flip my reality upside down like an hourglass, and that life wasn't a finite affair, but rather a perpetually recurring passage through a hole in time.

In many ways, a degree in the history of ideas is the ideal training for an aspiring writer.

I think Shakespeare is everybody's treasure.

Verona is a very beautiful city, but Siena just never ceases to fascinate me.

I absolutely believe the past had its share of warrior women who fought like men. Whether some of these were the actual Amazons from Greek myth is another matter.

The Hawley Book of the Dead had me completely spellbound from beginning to end. A storytelling virtuosa, Chrysler Szarlan has woven a wondrous, scintillating web of suspense, love, history, and magic that will keep you eagerly turning the pages late into the night. Even readers not normally drawn to the supernatural will be swept away by this book; it has everything a great adventure should have-and so much more.

...had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples.

The Amazons is a stupendous achievement--a long-anticipated centerpiece in the great puzzle of humankind. The story of these forbidden women, silenced for so long by the rigidity of traditional scholarship, is as exciting and surprising as a bestselling murder mystery; I simply couldn't put it down. Through scholarly brilliance and passion, Adrienne Mayor has opened the door to a forgotten world of gender equality, and her book ought to be required reading in every college history course.

Only weak men want women to be weak.

I am sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. You kept asking about Romeo and what he was really like. I was hoping that”—he smiled wistfully—“you would recognize me.

If you let go of me now,” I whispered, stretching against him, “it could be another six hundred years before you find me again. Are you willing to take that risk?

When the old men fight, the young people die.

Peppo!" I yelled, pulling at my cousin's suspenders. "I really don't want to be arrested, okay?" "Don't worry!" Peppo turned a corner and accelerated as he spoke. "I go too fast for police!

.... "death turns all men into great lovers. Would that they were equally ardent while the lady was still alive!

Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow.

Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow. Well, perhaps you are right. Perhaps the wise spurn one to remain safe from the other, but I should rather choose to have my eyes burnt in their sockets than to have been born without.

She laughed out loud, a warm, knowing laughter that made me once again wonder about the secret ingredient in these women’s lives. Whatever it was, I was clearly missing it. It was so much more than just self-confidence; it seemed to be the ability to love oneself, enthusiastically and unsparingly, body and soul, naturally followed by the assumption that every man on the planet is dying to get in on the act.

Look,' I said, struggling to keep up, 'I just wanna make one thing absolutely clear. I don't believe in guns. I just want peace. Okay?' Alessandro stopped in the middle of the corridor, took out the gun, and wrapped my hand around it before I realized what he was doing. 'Can you feel that? That's a gun. It exists. And there are a lot of people out there who do believe in it. So, excused me for taking care of them so you can have your peace.

Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.

Everything we say is a story. But nothing we say is just a story.

Within the realm of fiction, it is always tempting to set one's stories in a dystopian future, where all our misgivings about state power can be shown in full force.

Even as I pursued a doctorate in the history of ideas in my native Denmark, I realized I had neither the encyclopedic training nor the passion for cool logic - not to mention the nerve - to follow in the footsteps of classical liberal philosophers and economists such as Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman.

Ever since childhood, I've been interested in history and myth. Not just the facts and figures of the past, but everything that contributes to shape our perception of an age: architecture, art, literature and so forth.

I'm from Europe, and I was very aware that there are a lot of literature snobs - especially in Europe. As soon as something becomes a success, it has to be bad, and then they'll do everything they can to stab it to death.