First of all, let’s get one thing straight. Your Italy and our Italia are not the same thing. Italy is a soft drug peddled in predictable packages, such as hills in the sunset, olive groves, lemon trees, white wine, and raven-haired girls. Italia, on the other hand, is a maze. It’s alluring, but complicated. It’s the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters, or in the course of ten minutes. Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis.

La vostra Italy non e’ la nostra Italia. Italy e’ una droga leggera, spacciata in forme previdibili: colline al tramonto, olivi e limoni, vino bianco e ragazzi dai capelli neri. L’Italia, invece, e’ un labirinto.

Eppure la lentezza -a differenza dell’ozio, che richiede doti agonistiche- ha ancora il suo fascino.

Orson Welles used to say that Italy was full of actors – fifty million of them – almost all good. He claimed the few bad ones were on the stage, or the cinema screen.

If you are the owner of a factory employing 500 people, on Monday you talk to any of them about soccer, and that's completely unifying. Italy doesn't have very much in terms of national culture like that. ... You have Hollywood and all the stars, we don't have anything remotely (like that). Soccer compensates.

Soccer is more than a national sport. It's a national narrative.

So much (of soccer) is linked with cities and towns. We don't see franchises, as you do, that go from one place to another.

Political passions have become as irrational as those of football fans.

...l'imperfezione va oltre. E' tolleranza, rispetto dell'usato e attenzione ai segni del tempo. E' capacita' di badare alla merce, e non alla confezione.

Eppure la lentezza -a differenza dell'ozio, che richiede doti agonistiche- ha ancora il suo fascino.