Italian Quotes - Page 18

When I did my first story for Italian Vogue for Franca Sozzani, she gave me something like 47 full pages, and I was like, That's all? I didn't know any better.

The Italian economy is certainly the weakest of the big European countries.

I am a sucker for those old traditional places, and Rome is as good as it gets, particularly when you throw in Italian food.

Dante Alighieri has the most glorious imagination of modern poetry. So it's talking about us, it's concerning us. Everything in it conveys sentiment, emotions. He is really the greatest poet ever. So I am really very proud to present the shining pearl of Italian culture around the world.

I love African food, I love Italian food, but I rarely eat Italian out because it's so easy to make at home. On the other hand, unless you have specialized equipment, Chinese food is really tough because you literally can't get the pan hot enough.

And as the Italian proverb says, 'Revenge is the dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold.'

His [Frank Sinatra] voice defined not only a certain period of time, but America and what America meant to the world. Sinatra grew up, as my grandparents did, when being Italian was very, very prejudice against, but they didn't let it bring them down or use it as an excuse.

There was something in the bel canto, not just opera, but a certain style of Italian singing that I responded to deeply.

In an Italian household, there were two figures for me growing up - you had the Pope and you had Frank Sinatra, and, of course, Tony Bennett. And not necessarily in that order.

I pressed PLAY and started up Chiron's favorite--the All-Time Greatest Hits of Dean Martin. Suddenly the air was filled with violins and a bunch of guys moaning in Italian. The demon pigeons went nuts. They started flying in circles, running into each other like they wanted to bash their own brains out.

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he's an American child.

Even at the beginning when I arrived at Givenchy, there were certainly people who supported me, but not everyone loved me. They were saying, "Why an Italian who acts Gothic?" Never mind the fact that Italy is one of the main exhibitors of Gothic art in the world. But it was like, "No, Italians should only do sexy!"

The elegance of the Italian South is a very strong elegance and it is one that I bring. It is a sexy elegance - or at least, let's say less chaste.

I think that's what you and I have in common, Donatella Versace, that careful balance. It makes me proud to be an Italian. In the end, I am proud to do what I do.

I am super-Italian, not even European - Italian. And this is very precise. It's like houses. Over time they stabilize themselves in the terrain. I am still at the first step of a long staircase.

For me, aesthetically, Donatella Versace represent what the Italian woman is. There is always the American rock thing, the aristocratic, above-the-rest British manner, but Italy is at the heart of it.

I am one who is very meridione - Southern Italian. I am proud of this. I design everything with my team, which is fantastic and small. I design by look. For example, people always comment to me, "When you do men's shirts, you always keep them closed on the catwalk." That's my thing.

We are Italian. We are all little tribes - not only in fashion, but also in music - in everything, basically.

I do love the sound of ripping corn husks. The violence of the noise, the sustained popping and shoring of the silky organic threads, made me think of someone tearing up an expensive and potentially Italian set of trousers in a fit of madness that this person just might regret later.

If I can learn a couple of phrases in Italian but do mostly weird, absurd music things, people will like it.

Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts.

I'm away so much I've had to learn to cook, and I find it relaxing after filming. I make stews and liver and bacon, and an Italian mate taught me how to make a mean puttanesca sauce.

But can I tell the genuine-article Italian from the poseur Italian? No. To me they all seem like poseurs.

I lived right on the borderline of a black neighborhood. So I could go into the black area and then there'd be these ghetto theaters that you could actually see the new kung fu movie or the new blaxploitation movie or the new horror film or whatever. And then there was also, if you went just a little further away, there was actually a little art house cinema. So I could actually see, you know, French movies or Italian movies, when they came out.

My father's Peruvian! I actually have a lot of family in Cuzco. I'm also Swiss, Alaskan, French, Spanish and Italian.