32 Quotes by Andrea Camilleri

Montalbano and Valente seemed not to have heard him, looking as if their minds were elsewhere. But in fact they were paying very close attention, like cats that, keeping their eyes closed as if asleep, are actually counting the stars.

Montalbano sat outside reading a good detective novel by two Swedish authors, husband and wife, in which there wasn’t a page without a ferocious and justified attack on social democracy and the government. In his mind, Montalbano dedicated the book to all those who did not deign to read mystery novels because, in their opinion, they were only entertaining puzzles.

What do two women friends usually do when they see each other? We talked, we watched television, we listened to music Sometimes we did nothing at all. It was a pleasure just to know the other one was there.

In moments of crisis, all you gotta do is review your multiplication tables, and it’ll all blow over!

As they ate, they spoke of eating, as always happens in Italy.

I had a little friend, a peasant boy, who was younger than me. I was about ten. One day I saw that my friend had put a bowl, a cup, a teapot and a square milk carton on the edge of a well, had filled them all with water, and was looking at them attentively. ‘“What are you doing?” I asked him. And he answered me with a question in turn. ‘“What shape is water?” ‘“Water doesn’t have any shape!” I said, laughing. “It takes the shape you give it.”’ At.

Moltabano, for a moment, felt moved. That astonishing, wholly feminine capacity for deep understanding, for penetrating one’s feelings, for being at once mother and lover, daughter and wife.

He swam and he wept.

Giulio was against our meeting. He didn’t want me getting mixed up in things that, in his opinion, were no concern of mine. For decades the respectable people here did nothing but repeat that the Mafia was no concern of theirs but only involved the people involved in it. But I used to teach my pupils that the see-nothing, know-nothing attitude is the most mortal of sins. So now that its my turn to tell what I saw, I’m supposed to take a step back?