314 Quotes About Italy

Who can resist sleep at two or three in the afternoon in these sunlit parts of the Mediterranean?

As the sun rose I could see Etna, a truncated cone with a plume of smoke over it like the quill of a pen stuck in a pewter inkpot, rising out of the haze to the north of where I was treading water.

I suppose it had never struck him that, Ischia, which he looked at every evening to see what the weather would be like the next day, or Vesuvius, pearly in the dawn, had anything to do with him at all; but when he ceased to have them before his eyes he realized, in some dim fashion that they were as much part of him as his hands and his feet.

The thing about settling down that freaks me out is that you're being honest, You're saying, this is me. This is what I can do. This is it.

I understand the circumstances, and I chose you. Amore mio, you must believe that nothing can change my choice or how much I love you. There’s only one person who can keep me from you, and that’s you.

The Tuscan countryside whizzed by in a kaleidoscopic whirl of shapes and colors. Green grass and trees melded with blue sky, purple and yellow wildflowers, peachy-orange villas, brown-and-gray farmhouses, and the occasional red-and-white Autogrill, Italy's (delicious) answer to fast food.

There are olive trees outside and the imagined smell of their bark and silvered leaves brings with it the first unfurling of some new imperative she feels coiled up within her. Her whole body with a joyful shout know it is back in Italy.

… Could I return, I will not say to revel, but breath this sky, under which I was born: to rejoice with sea views and gardens; to consol me with your kindness; to drink this wine or this water, that might reduce my illness…

Whereas while you're travelling, nobody really knows. While you're travelling you still have the potential to do anything, be anything. It's only when you stop and actually try to do those things that you discover your own capabilities, I guess.