The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis Quotes
"But the impulse, the prompt, really to do so only occurred for me a year ago, one April Sunday in 1957."
"The world was not as it once was, when Etruria, with its confederation of free, aristocratic city-states, dominated almost the entire Italic peninsula."
"The recent dead are closer to us, and so it makes sense that we care more about them."
"It's as though they'd never lived, as though they were always dead."
"But now that you say that, it makes me think the opposite, that the Etruscans really did live, and that I care about them just as much as about the others."
"We went down into the most important tomb, the one reserved for the noble Matuta family."
"In the end, what did it matter? Once across the cemetery’s threshold, where each of them owned a second home, eternity did not perhaps appear to be such an illusion."
"And my heartstrings tightened as never before at the thought that in that tomb, established, it seemed, to guarantee the perpetual repose of its first occupant."
"It is likely that the distinguished professor of architecture was given a completely free hand."
"The fact remains that the same isolation, the very separateness with which the Finzi-Continis surrounded their deceased, also surrounded the other house they owned."
"The house itself, badly damaged by a bombardment in 1944, is still today occupied by fifty or so families of evacuees."
"The time when I actually managed to pass beyond, beyond the wall surrounding the Barchetto del Duca, and make my way between the trees and clearings of the great private wood as far as the magna domus itself and the tennis court, was something like ten years later."
"It was in 1938, about two months after the Racial Laws had been passed."
"In its phases of imperialist expansion capitalism is bound to manifest its intolerance regarding all national minorities, and the Jews in particular, who are the minority par excellence."
"Every situation, however sad and annoying it is, in the end offers certain compensations, and often significant ones."
"It’s strange how everything proceeded in such a way as to deceive me that nothing had substantially changed."
"Even things, even they have to die, my friend. And so, if even they have to die, it’s just as well to let them go."
"What an abyss of decadence we poor folk had fallen into!"
"The warmth of the blankets undoubtedly spurs me into activity."
"Just think for a moment all it must have witnessed since it first saw the light!"
"There’s nothing at all I don’t know about the subject. Try testing me and see."
"Every now and then it so happened that we all once again found each other in a group in front of the gate, waiting for Perotti to come and open it."
"The enchantment which had till then held the season in suspense had been irreparably broken."
"She looked at me as though I was some kind of monster."
"No, in the end, Bruno ought to have lit a candle in gratitude to the Racial Laws."
"Didn’t I recall the look she’d given poor Bruno that time when, as a pair, they lost the famous return match against the duo Désirée Baggioli and Claudio Montemezzo?"
"Without doing it deliberately, moralists like Bruno always fall for little types like Adriana, and from this springs a whole raft of jealous scenes, furtive tailings, unpleasant surprises, tearful episodes, sworn denials, even comings-to-blows, and infidelities."
"That night I spent in turmoil. Fitfully, I slept, I woke up, I slept again, and every time I slept I kept on dreaming of Micòl."
"It wasn’t as though I was at all desperate that first December evening in which I once more rode by bike across the Barchetto del Duca."
"One day his younger daughter, Dirce, arrived in his place. She too waited beside the desk for me to finish the coffee. I drank it and looked her up and down."
"With him in front and me in tow, we crossed at least a dozen rooms of differing size, some vast as real halls, some small, even tiny, and linked to each other by corridors which were not always straight nor on the same level."
"But who can ever foretell the future? Nearing eleven o’clock, as it happened, whilst my father, with the evident intent of dispelling the general low spirits, had begun singing the happy nonsense-verses of Caprét ch’avea comperà il signor Padre."
"It was a magnificent moonlit night, frozen, clear as could be."
"My bike’s front tyre barely rustled over the hardened snow, and the dry snow-dust it raised filled me with a sense of reckless joy."
"Her back against the door jamb, her shoulders covered with a black woollen shawl, she too stared at me in silence."
"The great upturned corolla of the candelabra above the table poured forth a veritable waterfall of light."
"Apart from the glow unleashed from the burning logs, the fire’s tongue-like flames drew out subtle flesh tones from its grain."
"Perotti’s a good fellow – I thought. He too was happy that the ‘Signorina’ was back home."
"Suppressing within myself every reason for unease, I felt enriched by a strange lightness, as though borne up by invisible wings."
"In the bright light, I swayed down the middle of the street, my ears numbed by the icy air."
"But what now? I drew back slowly. Now she was there, her face a few inches from mine."
"As distinct from last autumn, Micòl was not in shorts. She was wearing a pleated, white woollen dress, very old-fashioned."
"But I was desperate and wanted to hurt her."
"I had the notion of going to visit Malnate, to keep in contact at least with him."
"I realized even then that Malnate was perfectly aware of all the reasons, without exception, which kept me away from the Finzi-Continis."
"The last image I’d have of him was always the same: motionless in the middle of the street, astride his bike, he would be waiting there to check I’d properly closed the door on him."
"Even if I think of him, sent off to the Russian Front with the CSIR in 1941, never to return, I still have a vivid memory of how Micòl would react every time, between one tennis match and the next, he’d start off again ‘catechizing’ us."
"In a few months, you’ll see, all this that you’ve had to go through will no longer seem real. Perhaps you may even feel happy. You’ll feel yourself enriched by this, feel yourself ... I don’t know ... more mature."
"But in the end it’s much better this way."
"We were now most considerate to each other, perhaps over-considerate."
"The next evening, straight after supper I went out on my bike, and having gone down the whole of the Giovecca, I went and stopped not more than a hundred meters from the restaurant."
"What more could I ask? It must be the heat that’s bringing me down."
"It was necessary to conceal from him in some, even in that way, the seriousness of his illness."
"The truth that the next afternoon, he, the lucky one, would certainly be seeing Alberto and Micòl, perhaps talking to them about me, was enough to make me put aside any empty wish to rebel, and forced me to withdraw into my shell."