Italian Quotations

Growing up, I was always in the kitchen. Even in third grade, I made cooking videos called 'The Little Italian.' Very little production value, but it was good.

I'm very proud of being Italian-American, but people don't realize that the mafia is just this aberration. The real community is built on the working man, the guy who's the cop, the fireman, the truck driver, the bus driver.

I love and admire the American culture and the American dream. I learnt so many things about the American shoe industry and marketing strategies. I caught the secrets of American casual wear, that is elegant and wearable, retro and modern, and mixed it with an Italian touch, luxurious and handmade.

Italian cameramen grow up immersed in an awareness of light. It is part of their mythology.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.

For an Italian peasant a telegram from anywhere is a wondrous thing; and a cable from the terrestrial paradise of America is not lightly to be disregarded.

I speak a little bit of Italian, yeah. I understand more than I speak. I speak more of a dialect; my mum's from Naples and my dad's from Sicily, so it comes out little a bit of a cocktail of the Italian language.

My family was all born in Sicily and I'm Italian-American. They're the real thing. They're authentic Italians, and honestly they're the most open-minded, nicest people in the world and nothing can really offend them. That's the way I think true Sicilians are.

In America most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.

Italian style is a natural attitude. It is about a life of good taste. It doesn't have to be expensive. Simple but with good taste. Luxury is possible to buy. Good taste is not.

The beauty of Rome is that you can wander into a pizzeria just about anywhere and get a real Italian pizza that's thankfully worlds away from the Super Supreme I used to order at Pizza Hut as a kid.

I think because both of my parents were essentially salespeople, and Italian-Americans, I always seemed to get along with people; I had a knack of finding something to talk about.

Sometimes Italian fashion, especially in the summer, is bright and gaudy and tarty, so I'd be buying these bright pink and bright orange things, and when I got home, I'd just go, 'What was I thinking? I can't wear this!'

Wherever I go, I am Italian. The way I talk, the way I eat, the way femininity is important to me. The way I love Italian food.

Italian women are among the largest group of European consumers of hosiery.

Oh, my wife is a wonderful cook. She comes from a food-loving Italian family - her father owned a pizzeria!

I see myself as part English and part American, with a dash of Irish thrown in, and a pinch of Italian from my mother's ancestry.

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

I love food, all types of food. I love Korean food, Japanese, Italian, French. In Australia, we don't have a distinctive Australian food, so we have food from everywhere all around the world. We're very multicultural, so we grew up with lots of different types of food.

The earliest movies that I loved were French movies and Italian movies. I grew up watching those kind of movies and often find the truest looks at human nature - you can find them in another countrys movies.

I studied French in high school and German in college and I once took a 24-hour Italian crash course. English has by far the most words in it of any other language. Our money might not be worth anything anymore, but the language is.

There are many great wine producers from all over the world making fantastic wines. Italian wines especially are making an enormous comeback after sometimes being labeled as inexpensive jug wines.

I'd like to have any sort of Mexican or Italian food any time of the day!

I am not 100% English, I am actually part Italian and even part Hungarian. Therefore I feel very much part of Europe both in my upbringing and outlook.

The crew, like all Italian crews, was generous, warm, and enthusiastic.

My father was a trained accountant, a BCom from Sydenham College and a self-taught violinist. In the 1920s, when he was in his teens, he heard a great violinist, Jascha Heifetz, and he was so inspired listening to him that he bought himself a violin, and with a little help from an Italian teacher, he learned to play it.

The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again.

I studied classical opera, so I was always singing in Italian and German and French.

I was in Italy in 1992 working on magazine articles when I got a call from the Italian travel commission. They asked, would I mind being an escort for an older woman? I told them I don't do that kind of work, but then they said it was Julia Child, and I said I'd be right there.

I hope that my government can help change Italian mentality.

I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi looks in the mirror and sees a playboy of the old school. And men such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Charlie Sheen no doubt look at Berlusconi and think, 'Role model!' Women, of course, know otherwise. They see him as an aging, pathetic buffoon.

And we have a little herb garden, which survived the winter thanks to global warming. It makes me feel like a cool, old Italian housewife, that I kept my rosemary alive outside all winter.

If you haven't cried, your eyes can't be beautiful.

I mean, people don't know what race I am. They never know if I'm Hawaiian or Italian or Mexican or Spanish or white. I could play Jewish, I could play anything.

I came to think that nobody from England could draw American comic books, because they were clearly all done by this sort of Mafia, all these guys with Italian and Irish names who had the whole thing sewn up. It was actually seeing a comic book drawn by Barry Smith, who was about my age, and English.

Nowadays I actually cook Italian-style food more than French heavy sauces. I make a good salad, some great roasted vegetables, grilled fish. Im crazy about L.A. because at the farmers market you find all kinds of wild mushrooms.

In view of the experience I had acquired in the field of chemical industry, certain Italian government and industrial bodies entrusted me in 1938 with the task of instituting research and development studies on the production of synthetic rubber in Italy.

I tried to become a family man. I got married, but it didn't work out. After 22 months we got an annulment. Then I married an Italian girl, which resulted in an immediate annulment. I had two annulments by the time I was 23.

My CD collection has a lot of world music - lots of Indian, African, Portuguese, Greek, Italian music. Because of my husband, a lot of jazz, too.

The Communists at that moment were very strong in Italy, and the Italian Communist Party was the biggest Communist Party outside the Soviet Union.

My dad lives in Sicily, so I'm half Italian and half Irish - it's a fiery combination.

After this, I took private lessons in Italian from an elementary school teacher. He gave me themes to write about, and some of them turned out so well that he told me to publish them in a newspaper.

It's typical of Italian culture that we only start to feel emotional about something when we have the possibility to see it in front of us. By February, Italy will have Olympic fever.

Living in a small Italian hilltown, and having lived in a small town in south Georgia, I understand that you can recognize a family gene pool by the lift of an eyebrow, or the length of a neck, or a way of walking.

There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. Its the art of putting all your energy into one thing; its the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture.

Being Italian, I have a very special relationship with the culinary arts. One my projects was to share Italian cultural food with my colleagues.

I studied literature and Italian at Yale. I wrote my thesis about Italo Svevo, one of my heroes.

The first wine I drank, a Chateau Haut-Brion, I was 22, it was my first glass of wine, and I discovered voluptuousness. From there, I started tasting French wines, then Spanish wines, then Italian wines.

I was born and raised in New York, but my family on both sides is of Italian descent.

Not unless I do all these ancient and Italian or French or Baroque in the beginnning, I do German.

I love the simplicity, the ingredients, the culture, the history and the seasonality of Italian cuisine. In Italy people do not travel. They cook the way grandma did, using fresh ingredients and what is available in season.

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.

It's only because I feel like such a philistine spending all that time in hair and makeup that I started to knit. I used to spend that time studying Italian and French. Then after I had two kids, my brain turned to mush and I took up knitting.

The lucky thing was that I was Italian; when the other Italians saw me fight back, they came to my defence.

I'm going to do an adaptation of the Italian film, Bread and Tulips. I really like that film.

If I start feeling down I'll gorge myself on pasta. That usually does the trick. It's the Italian blood in me.

I am very much a person who appreciates perennial things. Things like a Lacoste shirt, a Clarks desert boot, Persol sunglasses and Vans shoes that have been the same forever. There are certain things that once you find it, you like it and it's done. I like Italian clothing, like suits from Battistoni and I have a shirt by Piero Albertelli.

Once you understand the foundations of cooking - whatever kind you like, whether it's French or Italian or Japanese - you really don't need a cookbook anymore.

The Italian Revolution was fought first of all to obtain the liberty and unity of the nation, and then, with that achieved, to join the freest and most advanced nations in inaugurating a new era of peace, justice, and joint cooperation in the work of civilization.

My father was an American who could cuss in Italian and make an aria out of it. It was wonderful to watch. But then again, he was a Gemini. I believe in that stuff.

Well, the Communists at that moment were very strong in Italy and the Italian Communist Party was the biggest Communist Party outside Soviet Union, there's no doubt about that.

My mother is not a CIA agent, but she's an Italian mother, and she'd do anything for her son.

I love the feel of good quality Italian black lace that feels delicate and really feminine.

I think the set looks great. It's kind of like Battlestar Galactica meets like the Italian furniture fair.

I really liked the food in Japan. There is something so organized, neat, and methodical about it. They put a lot of care and quality into their cooking. I also love Mediterranean, New American, and Italian food, because the cuisines borrow influences from all over the world.

Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb, and it's that mix of people, it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.

The Cinquecento was an engine of motivation at Fiat. It refurbished the image of the entire company. It's a symbol for the company, but it's more than that. It's a global Italian symbol, as Mini is a global British symbol and the Beetle is a global German symbol.

There are many actors who have inspired me: Spencer Tracy for his incredible elegance and, of course, Cary Grant. But, there's also an Italian actor I admire a great deal: Alberto Sordi.

I never really knew what fine cuisine was when I was a little boy in Canada. For me, Italian food was 'Kraft Dinner' or pizza. When I moved to New York, that's when I discovered all the Italian food.

The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth.

I've always felt like a foreigner wherever I've lived. I don't feel much towards my Italian or Scottish roots, although I do cook the pasta at home.

I'm a big pasta fan. I'm a big Italian food fan. Anything Italian - I love cheese, mozzarella. Mozzarella is my favorite, so I have to say anything Italian, I'll take it.

And just when we were at the end of our design process there was the news that the Italian government and the U.S. government had signed an agreement to fly the first Italian astronaut on that flight.

But Clint I love, because Clint was my mentor. I knew nothing about making an Italian movie.

The earliest golfing memories that I have are of the Italian Open when I was about six years of age. Watching that event is how I really got started in the game.

I speak English, Portuguese, and French. One day I'd love to learn Italian.

The only problem was that I couldn't communicate with Dario. He speaks Italian and I don't. We had a translator the whole time. I just felt that something was lost with the go between. He was a delightful man, but I wish we could have spoken the same language.

The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.

I prefer more spicy food to your Italian to be fair.

Italian food is all about ingredients and it's not fussy and it's not fancy.

If I spoke Italian, I'd be in Italy in a minute. I love the food, I love the way people live there. I mean, it really is my idea of paradise.

I cook a lot of Italian food. Bucatini Pomodoro is my best: it's a fat spaghetti with tomato, olive oil, and reminds me of getting married in Italy.

Pasta isn't just for Italian food anymore. Now there are tasty pasta recipes found in Asian cuisine, and it's emerging as a newfound love for vegans.

There are lots of wonderful old Italian actors. You don't need to take an Egyptian to play an Italian actor.

I watched a film called 'Elephant' recently. Its not stylish in the sense of expensive suits and Italian cars, but the styling on every single character is spot on.

My parents were both from extremely different backgrounds. My father's Italian, my mother was of Swedish descent. They're both first-generation Americans.

After karting in Venezuela, I came to Europe in 1998 to compete in international kart races, which was great for me to get experience racing outside my country. After consistently being at the top, I decided to move to Italian Formula Renault.

Culture and tradition have to change little by little. So 'new' means a little twist, a marriage of Japanese technique with French ingredients. My technique. Indian food, Korean food; I put Italian mozzarella cheese with sashimi. I don't think 'new new new.' I'm not a genius. A little twist.

I'm totally Italian, but I'm not a diva. If you could see the way I'm dressed in daily life, that's not a diva. Appearances are so not important to me.

I was a mod when I was a kid. I'd be in Italian pencil-leg trousers with those bowling shoes you wear outside and a Fred Perry polo shirt with a V-neck sweater. It was like an Essex uniform - a very specific look.

I have an Italian comedy at the Venice Film Festival.

Last night, two men tried to force my shutters. I recognized them: they are two of Rodin's Italian models. He told them to kill me. I am in his way; he wants to get rid of me.

I've played American, Italian, Greek, French. I've been really lucky that way.

I like the idea of a love story between men. There is a great affection between men, which exists much more in ethnic groups: Latin, Italian, Jewish.

When I am walking in Central Park, I recognize the Italians. Because an Italian, even when he jogs, he's dressed perfect.

There's no big splashy renaissance in Italian films. We have good young actors and directors. What we lack are screenwriters. It's hard to write about Italy.

St. Louis has a lot of weird food customs that you don't see other places - and a lot of great ethnic neighborhoods. There's a German neighborhood. A great old school Italian neighborhood, with toasted ravioli, which seems to be a St. Louis tradition. And they love provolone cheese in St. Louis.

My most treasured item is the brown leather bag that my mum bought me from a little Italian shop for my 21st. It's supposed to be a vanity bag, but I use it as a handbag.

Like the old Italian saying goes, 'It ain't rocket surgery.