Famous Tuscany Quotes

Now we wanted to sample all that life had to offer, and we were off to a pretty good start. I’d danced under the moonlight in Tuscany, dined on escargot in a French village, and risked my life climbing into the back of a motorbike taxi in Budapest. I’d seen world-famous landmarks and met local people. The one thing I hadn’t done was achieve a non-self-assisted orgasm. Awkward, I know.

There is a wide variety of good meat available, often simply grilled or roasted on the spit, and the preference is for farmyard animals, such as rabbit, lamb, chicken, duck and wood pigeons. The famous bistecca alla fiorentina, a T-bone steak, is always cooked over charcoal, and rosticciana is grilled spare ribs. In Tuscany, meat dishes are often stewed slowly in a tomato sauce, called in umido (stracotto is beef cooked in this way or in red wine). In the Maremma, wild boar (cinghiale) is sometimes prepared alla cacciatora, marinated in red wine, with parsley, bay leaves, garlic, rosemary, onion, carrot, celery, sage and wild fennel. It is then cooked slowly at a low heat in a terracotta pot with oil, lard, hot spicy pepper, and a little tomato sauce.

Dorian? Is that an important publisher?" "Count Dorian is really famous. How do you not know him?" "I can only think of the Dorian in the painting. You know, Oscar Wilde’s beautiful, cursed one?" he says. "Sorry. And, anyway, why is he important?" he asks, noting her apprehension. "Well, for one thing, he’s a Count." "Pardon..." he mocks, in a French accent. "Why is this Count famous?" "Because he cultivates young talent. He’s launched a lot of young people in different fields: music, painting, sculpture, fashion, theater, movies." She pauses for breath. "And writers, too." "So he’s a type of patron." She nods. "And he’s contacted you about your novels?" She nods again. "And what’s the problem?" "He has an estate in Tuscany, as well as houses in New York and Hong Kong. And he’s asked to meet me." "Are you embarrassed to go on your own? I can take you if you want. But if he’s a talent hunter, you just need to act as natural as possible and you'll be fine. I imagine he’s used to it. He can’t not like you," he says, caressing her face. "He thinks I’m a man..," she whispers. Andrea freezes. "Eh?!" he exclaims, looking at her and suddenly feeling a strange foreboding. "I

I have always fancied myself as a fairly objective looker, but I’m beginning to wonder whether I do not miss whole categories of things. Let me give you an example of what I mean, Alicia. Some years ago the U.S. Information Service paid the expenses of a famous and fine Italian photographer to go to America and to take pictures of our country. It was thought that pictures by an Italian would be valuable to Italians because they would be of things of interest to Italy. I was living in Florence at the time and I saw the portfolio as soon as the pictures were printed. The man had traveled everywhere in America, and do you know what his pictures were? Italy, in every American city he had unconsciously sought and found Italy. The portraits—Italians; the countryside—Tuscany and the Po Valley and the Abruzzi. His eye looked for what was familiar to him and found it. . . . This man did not see the America which is not like Italy, and there is very much that isn’t. And I wonder what I have missed in the wonderful trip to the south that I have just completed. Did I see only America? I confess I caught myself at it. Traveling over those breathtaking mountains and looking down at the shimmering deserts . . . I found myself saying or agreeing—yes, that’s like the Texas panhandle— that could be Nevada, and that might be Death Valley. . . . [B]y identifying them with something I knew, was I not cutting myself off completely from the things I did not know, not seeing, not even recognizing, because I did not have the easy bridge of recognition . . . the shadings, the nuance, how many of those I must not have seen. (Newsday, 2 Apr. 1966)

I had to remind myself I was in a food shop. Even in New York, once famous for its rudeness, now stuck in a condition of permanent impatience, I had never seen anything like it. There, a retailer, however jaded, still pretends to honor the shopkeeper’s code that a customer is always right. Dario followed a much blunter, take no prisoners philosophy, that actually the customer is a dick.

Most of the Olympians in this large study, born between 1900 and 1904, died aged around 80, despite the fact that they led healthier lives even after the end of their competitive career. An athlete normally does not smoke, follows a controlled diet (high in calories though) and has a good, or even excellent, quality of life. Let’s take, for instance, some of the cyclists who have won the Giro d’Italia or the Tour de France. None of these has ever reached 100 years of age. The famous Gino Bartali, nicknamed ‘the iron man of Tuscany’, died at 85 years, Alfredo Binda at 83, Philippe Thys at 81 and Roger Lapébie at 85.

And you’re spending the whole summer in Rome?” I ask. “Digging things up?” He absentmindedly plays with a loose string at the hem of his shirt. “We’ll be here a few more weeks. Then we’ll move on to a dig in Tuscany. And we get weekends off, sometimes even three-day weekends, so I plan on traveling when I can. Blowing all my graduation money,” he adds with a laugh. “Where to?” “Pompeii, for obvious reasons, but I also want to see Venice before it sinks. And everyone says the place to see at least once in your life is the Cinque Terre.” I do my best to repeat the words he just said. “Cinque Terre?” “It means ‘the five lands.’ It’s a section of the northern coast, the Italian Riviera. Five little fishing villages all connected by a path along the cliffs of the sea. The trail’s pretty famous. It’s called la Via dell’Amore.” The words flow like he’s a local. I look away quickly when I realize I’m staring at his lips, silently begging for him to keep speaking in Italian. “Sounds beautiful.” “I’ve heard it’s one of the best places to photograph in the country,” he says, pointing to my camera. “You should go and check it out. I mean, since your summer’s free now.” He flashes a sneaky smile. My partner in crime. I return the smile. “Maybe I will.