Women react differently: a French woman who sees herself betrayed by her husband will kill his mistress; an Italian will kill her husband; a Spaniard will kill both; and a German will kill herself.
The toughest nights when I was a young, unknown comedian were opening for these real old-time Italian singers. I'm like Grace Jones to them. "This guy is nuts-talking about socks. Where's the wife jokes, where's the fat jokes?"
And I said to myself, here's the problem with the world: The Italians are too Italian, and nobody else is Italian enough.
Italian journalism is free because it serves one cause and one purpose. . . mine!
She's got a big belt around her hips. It has a shiny buckle with PRADA on it, which is Italian for insecure.
I do enjoy wearing Japanese and Italian clothing. I also enjoy my blue jeans or tennis shorts and running shoes. I like driving a Porsche because it is an elegant machine and it is a very beautiful experience to drive it. It's magnificently made.
I'm not glamorous, I don't have a look, I don't know anything about opera, I have no Italian, and I'm too old.
We thought the church had withdrawn from interfering in Italian politics. . . but instead there is a terrible resurgence. These are ugly signs for freedom of expression.
On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German Monk toward the end of the fourteenth century. . . First of all, what style should I employ?
St. Louis has a lot of weird food customs that you don't see other places - and a lot of great ethnic neighborhoods. There's a German neighborhood. A great old school Italian neighborhood, with toasted ravioli, which seems to be a St. Louis tradition. And they love provolone cheese in St. Louis.
Fortunately the Italian people is not habituated to eating several times a day.
I was discriminated against because I was Jewish, Italian, black and Puerto Rican. But maybe the worst prejudice I experienced was against the poor. I grew up on welfare and often had to move in the middle of the night because we couldn't pay the rent.
Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.
Why does the New Italian navy have glass bottom boats? To see the Old Italian Navy!
Some words have multiple meanings. Scholastic, aware that I'm allergic to preservatives, kindly got someone to translate the phrase "I can only eat food without preservatives" into Italian. They warned me, however, as they taught me how to say it, that the Italian word for "preservatives" is the same as the word for "condom. " So that I should be careful how I look when I say it.
There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poemsthere lives a real transcendental buffoonery. Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet's own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo.
Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people. Asking in broken Italian which train we are supposed to board at the Venice railway station is far from useless. Indeed, it is better to do that than to remain uncertain and silent and end up back in Budapest rather than in Milan.
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.
Italian style for me is to have a sense of tradition, respect for one's roots, and a sartorial approach.
In Iran, the women are like Italian women, they rule the house inside. But it's full of life. The history is very rich. The mystic of the Middle Ages. We have to learn from them. They influence all the philosophers when they came to Europe all those many many years ago.