I remember when we did our first read-through, Sonny [Bono] looks at the script and he goes, "Okay, I'll see you guys later. Chai-ay-oh!" And I said, "It's ciao! Aren't you Italian? C-i-a-o doesn't spell 'chai-ay-oh. '" Sonny's dead, so he won't be embarrassed if I tell that story.
There is nothing like a fine Italian sound.
It's great hearing stories of my mum growing up in Brooklyn, then moving to Florida, having me and growing up with this eccentric, fun family. Although I don't eat a lot of Italian things, because I'm vegan. I was raised on meat and cheese, so I've had enough for anyone's normal life span.
Free speech isn't dead in Germany and Italy, merely the speakers.
Liberty is no longer the virgin, chaste and severe, to be fought for. . . we have buried the putrid corpse of liberty. . . the Italian people are a race of sheep.
Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will.
My goal is to make Italian food clean and accessible and beautiful and tasty, with simple ingredients that people can find at a local grocery store, because people don't want to go to a gourmet shop in search of items that will sit in their pantry for years after they use just a teaspoon or pinch of them.
There is an old Italian proverb about the nature of translation: "Traddutore, traditore!" This means simply, "Translators-traitors!" Of course, as you can see, something is lost in the translation of this pithy expression: there is great similarity in both the spelling and the pronunciation of the original saying, but these get diluted once they are put in English dress. Even the translation of this proverb illustrates its truth!
The crew, like all Italian crews, was generous, warm, and enthusiastic.
An Italian piazza was my vision - a place where people would come and meet, see an exhibition, browse through books, have a drink, eat, rest, shop. Even today, the best compliment is when someone tells me that they were having a difficult day, and when they came here, they felt better.
We would certainly encourage the Italian government to put forward an ambitious agenda of reform.
My wife spoke perfect Italian and she was very beautiful and very suave Italian men were crowding around her, talking all the time and if I was to even understand what was going on, I had to learn the language fast.
I do like Italian graves; they look so much more lived in.
Venetians feel affection and loyalty to their city, rather than to the Italian state.
Say German cars are sort of very built and efficient. Italian cars are a bit flamboyant and quick. Mexican cars just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent.
I love America. I lived here too but my links are exclusively Italian.
Consider the death of Princess Diana. This accident involved an English citizen, with an Egyptian boyfriend, crashed in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian, who was drunk on Scotch whiskey, followed closely by Italian paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, and finally treated with Brazilian medicines by an American doctor. In this case, even leaving aside the fame of the victims, a mere neighborhood canvass would hardly have completed the forensic picture, as it might have a generation before.
At one point Trudeau mentioned to me that the National Gallery wanted to buy a masterpiece by the great Italian painter Lotto, and it needed a million dollars from the Treasury Board. "Is that Lotto-Quebec or Lotto-Canada?" I joked, but I got the message, and the National Gallery got the painting.
Some princes, so as to hold securely the state, have disarmed their subjects, others have kept their subject towns distracted by factions. . . Our forefathers, and those who were reckoned wise, were accustomed to say that it was necessary to hold Pistoia [an Italian city] by factions and Pisa by fortress, and with this idea they fostered quarrels in some of their tributary towns so as to keep possession of them the more easily.
Italian women are some of the most beautiful in the world. This is why the Vatican is in Italy. If a man can walk across Italy and retain his celibacy, he's got what it takes to be a priest - or an interior decorator.