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.
Elsewhere in Italy is the lovely city of Venice, which each year attracts millions of visitors despite the fact that it is basically an enormous open sewer.
But ‘art’ is not anything serious or exclusive: it is the smell of oil paint, Henri Murger’s Vie de Boheme, corduroy trousers, the operatic Italian model: but the poetry, above all, of linseed oil and turpentine.
At one point Trudeau mentioned to me that the National Gallery wanted to buy a masterpiece by the great Italian painter Lotto, and it needed a million dollars from the Treasury Board. "Is that Lotto-Quebec or Lotto-Canada?" I joked, but I got the message, and the National Gallery got the painting.
I grew up speaking Spanish and English. My mother can speak Spanish, English, French and Italian, and she's pretty good at faking Portuguese. I wish that I spoke more languages than I do.
There's no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification. . . I'm always asked is there Greek DNA or an Italian gene, but, of course, there isn't. . . . We're very closely related.
I feel like all the American artists are aesthetically not very interesting and mired in a complaining relationship to its own culture, whereas the Italian work, from a different era, is so comfortable with its relationship to nature and to culture.
The same word passed through three minds, simultaneously, philosophical, fatalistic, the eternal refuge of the Italian: Pazienza.
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.
I could kill Vino for all this doping crap. Strangle him slowly with piano wire just like they do in the Italian gangster movies. I bet I could get Aru to buy the wire.
Italian women are some of the most beautiful in the world. This is why the Vatican is in Italy. If a man can walk across Italy and retain his celibacy, he's got what it takes to be a priest - or an interior decorator.
I want to eat good Italian food and get better at their language. It seems so romantic too.
I am engaged in answering that Italian buffoon, Mazotti, whose views upon the larval development of the tropical termites have excited my derision and contempt. . .
My high school had been a renovated old hospital, so when I first came to the UCLA campus in the spring of 1965, I was immediately impressed by the classic northern Italian architecture that was mixed with futuristic ultra-modern buildings. The classic architecture gave it the heft of old wisdom while the modernistic look inspired hope for the future.
Well, I have a lot of appetites and try to revel in almost everything, so inspiration can even come from a well-appointed submarine sandwich, you know? Potentially in the form of The Godmother from Santa Monica's Bay Cities [Italian Deli &] Bakery. But for a primal "Wow, every sense is on fire!" moment, it would have to be live music.
I've played some gangster roles, but that's obviously not me. When you're an Italian-American New York actor, it's just an easy way to get cast.
There's this one photograph of guy I know named Simon. The way he's standing, the background, the way his tie's flipping in the wind-it looks good in the small version, but in the big version, he looks like some kind of Italian fashion superhero or something. Like if the fashion police couldn't handle it, they'd call Simon, wearing a big S on his chest for some kind of fashion superhero.
My grandmother was a chef, and she taught me to cook. One day I want a restaurant, a small Italian grill. Thats my aspiration.
Invest in stupidity, its stocks never go down.
There are terrible living conditions and unhappiness, (even) where everybody is Italian.