Descendants of pigeons once fed by Keats, Byron, George Sand, Chopin and many other famous lovers are still being fed, and the sudden sound when they all rise together, frightened away, is like the sound of giant sails flapping.
A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.
The weakest kind of fruit drops earliest to the ground.
I was in Venice teaching, so I reread Henry James's "The Wings of the Dove. " I love James.
I have an Italian comedy at the Venice Film Festival.
It's a fault line where the flotsam and energy that washes up from the Pacific collides with all of urban America crashing in from the other direction.
I will never forget experiencing Venice for the first time. It feels like you are transported to another time - the art, music, food and pure romance in the air is like no other place.
Though justice be thy plea consider this, that in the course of justice none of us should see salvation.
Venice was and is full of lost places where people put up for sale the last worn bits of their souls, hoping no one will buy.
At 6 p. m. I stood in the doorway of my studio facing the Venice boardwalk. A few spectators watched as I pushed two live electric wires into my chest. The wires crossed and exploded, burning me but saving me from electrocution.
[On Venice:] A wondrous city of fairest carving, reflected in gleaming waters swirled to new patterning by every passing gondola.
I like not fair terms and a villain's mind.
To live in Venice is like being domesticated in the heart of an opal.
Perhaps it is because Venice is both liquid and solid, both air and stone, that it somehow combines all the elements crucial to make our imaginations ignite and turn fantasies into realities.
Venice was always one step removed from what was going on. If you were in Turin or in Milan or one of the industrial centers, you would have had a much more active political constituency. Venice essentially lived for itself.
We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.
Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head?
There is still one of which you never speak. ' Marco Polo bowed his head. 'Venice,' the Khan said. Marco smiled. 'What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?' The emperor did not turn a hair. 'And yet I have never heard you mention that name. ' And Polo said: 'Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.
The villany you teach me I shall execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
There were two practical reasons we moved to Venice. One was that there was an artists movement and a countercultural movement. Lots of people we might want to hire lived in the area. We also wanted to buy in a lower rent area that looked like it was going to be gentrified so that we could eventually sell the studio for more money.