I suppose my liking for Italy is partly atavism, my family are of the old Roman stock. They came from the Alps north of Venice.
. . . . . . an outlaw gulch, a haven for draft resisters, struggling artists, and drug addicts. . . . . a camp for semi-demented adults. . . . Venice is like the legendary Phoenix - it always seems to rise again from the ashes.
Venice is the prettiest city I've ever seen. It looks like a Disneyland ride.
Do all men kill the things they do not love?
Venice was and is full of lost places where people put up for sale the last worn bits of their souls, hoping no one will buy.
I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip
Venice would be a fine city if it were only drained.
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottage princes' palaces.
In memory Venice is always magic.
If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.
I traveled for seven years, and when I came back home I was completely lost. I didn't know what to do with my life, so I decided to let people decide for me. For month I followed strangers on the street. For the pleasure of following, not because the party interested me. I photographed them without their knowledge, took note of their movements, and finally lost sight of them. At the end of January 1980, I chose a man and followed him to Venice. That's how I started. That's all.
Venice, Italy, survives 365 days out of every year in water; New Orleans can survive a few days of water if it has to.
Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head?
If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you've imagined. Venice is - Venice is better.
Venice is ever the fragile labyrinth at the edge of the sea and it reminds us how brief and perilous the journeys of our lives are; perhaps that is why we love it so. City of plagues and brief liaisons, city of lingering deaths and incendiary loves, city of chimeras, nightmares, pigeons, bells. You are the only city in the world whose dialect has a word for the shimmer of canal water reflected on the ceiling of a room.
I like not fair terms and a villain's mind.
As I read Mann in German for the first time, the full achievement - both literary and philosophical - of Death in Venice struck me forcefully, so that, when I was invited to give the Schoff Lectures at Columbia, the opportunity to reflect on the contrasts between novella and opera seemed irresistible.
Go to Venice. Find Scorpia. And you will find your destiny.
If I could live in one city and do every single thing I do there, I would choose Venice. You can't turn your head without seeing something amazing.
I moved into a nice houseboat in Little Venice when I was 15 years old. I found a girlfriend called Monday and a houseboat called Friday, so I had the week sewn up.