14 Quotes by Marlena De Blasi

How strange it is, sometimes, which conversations or events stays with us while so much else melts as fast as April snow.

We violate the innocence of things in the name of rationality so we can wander about, uninterrupted, in our search for passion and sentiment.

Even in these first days together, it is very clear that this feeling of mine for the stranger has trumped all the other adventures in my life. It has shuffled everything and everyone else I thought I was moving toward or away from.

It was Don Paolo's birthday and all the people of the village were gathered in the piazza to celebrate him. The band played, the wine flowed, the children danced, and, as he stood for a moment alone under the pergola, a little girl approached the the beloved priest. "But Don Paolo, are you not happy?" she asked him. "Of course I am happy," he assured the little girl. "Why, then, aren't you crying?

You will sustain your rage, using time as a defense against fear and indolence. In the great stash of defenses, time is the one least imaginative.

Take my hand and grow young with me. Don’t rush. Don’t sleep. Be a beginner. Light the candles. Keep the fire. Dare to love someone. Tell yourself the truth. Stay inside the rapture.

Some people are born empty. All manner of good deeds and patience and loving kindness can’t even begin to fill them up.

Sicily could only be an island, less by the caprice of nature than by her own insolence. As though she might have quit Italy had she not already been born separate from it.

There isn’t an agony in the world more powerful than tenderness.