59 Quotes by Michael Paterniti

Laughing brings out the good in food. It’s good to laugh. If you don’t laugh, you’re going to magnify. And if you magnify, you’re going to die.

I remember doing 'The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy,' and I'd been reporting that story for a long time; I had a lot of good facts, but I had no story. I didn't know what the story was.

Storytelling is about patience, about making sense of the moments of pathos and beauty that you find, and about carrying these moments back into your own life.

Ring Kuot, a 15-year-old Sudanese boy, was rumored to be eight feet three. And until Leonid's emergence at eight feet four inches last spring, people generally assumed that Radhouane Charbib of Tunisia, at seven feet nine, was the tallest documented man in the world.

The monastery of Christ in the Desert had its resident hermit, Brother Xavier, chosen after years of devotion and service, a monk so trusted and experienced that he qualified by Benedictine standards to be sent to the front lines in the fight against the devil.

Roja Dove - who, at 58, is a stock-straight six feet and handsome with lantern jaw, blue eyes, and impeccably combed silvering hair on the sides of an otherwise tanned bald head - may possess the finest nose in the world.

Roja Dove believes that by test and experimentation - by a sort of psychoanalysis via fragrance - you can find the flavors and smells that connect you both to the here and now and to memories of the past.

Listening to Brunello Cucinelli is like getting your own personal tutorial with a very glamorous, fatherly professor. He is charming and solicitous, speaking in an urgent, musical voice. Associates say he is both disciplined and happy, as well as extremely meticulous. When it comes to business, he's known as savvy and calculating.

Albanians love topiary and fancy doors. They speak Albanian, an Indo-European language with traces of Greek and Latin - and the lek is their monetary denomination, which trades at one hundred to one on the dollar. Their food is excellent, a melange of Greek, Turkish, and Italian cuisine, all very fresh and legume-y.