Quotes from Iris Origo

Behind each biography there should always be a rich treasury of unformulated knowledge, a tapestry that has not been unrolled.

I do not think that one is likely to write a good biography unless one feels some sympathy with its subject.

The biographer's real business - if it is not too arrogant to say so - is simply this: to bring the dead to life.

We are being governed by the dregs of the nation - and their brutality is so capricious that no one can feel certain that he will be safe tomorrow.

Just as, in travel, one may miss seeing the sunset because one cannot find the ticket-office or is afraid of missing the train, so in even the closest human relationships a vast amount of time and of affection is drained away in minor misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and failures in consideration or understanding.

These—the shared, simple acts of everyday life—are the realities on which international understanding can be built.

every subject under the sun, was seen only in its relation to vested interests. So complete, so whole-hearted was his preoccupation that after an hour's conversation I began to wonder whether I had not been incredibly naïve in believing there was any other governing motive in human life.

Mussolini, like all other dictators, is betrayed by his own men.

He was not being a propagandist, but simply stating a creed, a creed to which he brought an absolutely single-minded, self-denying devotion, with no half-shades of humour, self-criticism or doubt.

There is a bitter irony for listeners here in the exhortations of the BBC to the Italian people to rid themselves of the Germans: so might one urge a sheep to rid itself of a wolf.