Quotes from Andrea Camilleri

Montalbano felt moved. This was real friendship, Sicilian friendship, the kind based on intuition, on what was left unsaid. With a true friend, one never needs to ask, because the other understands on his own accordingly.

The memory of the aged becomes clearer and clearer with time. It has no pity.

What do two women friends usually do when they see each other? We talked, we watched television, we listened to music Sometimes we did nothing at all. It was a pleasure just to know the other one was there.

Montalbano and Valente seemed not to have heard him, looking as if their minds were elsewhere. But in fact they were paying very close attention, like cats that, keeping their eyes closed as if asleep, are actually counting the stars.

The inspector sat down on a stair, fired up a cigarette, and entered an immobility contest with a lizard.

He was convinced he would keep his word. Not because he feared for his health, but because one cannot break a promise made to one's guardian angel. And he resumed the climb.

And in our dark days, with so many threatening clouds on the horizon, he concluded, we puff up a story like this to drug people, to distract their attention from the serious problems and divert them with a Romeo-and-Juliet story, one scripted, however, by a soap opera writer.

He swam and he wept.

Wearing glasses for reading meant surrendering to old age without the least bit of a fight.

A positive vision is what keeps us going despite the misfortunes and setbacks that fill our lives. The sole disadvantage is that it stops us to seeing evil.

In moments of crisis, all you gotta do is review your multiplication tables, and it'll all blow over!

Getting seasick?" the inspector asked him at one point. "No. Just sick of myself." "Why?" "Because every now and then I realize what a stupid shit I am to go along with some of your brilliant ideas.

Mi ha dato invece l'impressione che la signora, in questo suo continuo darsi, volesse... è difficile spiegarmi... volesse perdersi..." "O piuttosto annullarsi?" "Ecco, annullarsi, si è il verbo giusto" "mi congratulo vivamente con lei, commissario. È un uomo molto sensibile e acuto" "Perchè mi dice questo?" "Perchè molti si sono fatti un'idea sbagliata di Laura

one cannot be held forever to a less-than-honorable act, after a life of great integrity, just because of one moment of weakness.

Unwell? I was fine, as good as one might feel in such circumstances. No, my friend, I merely pretended to faint. I'm a good actress. Actually, a thought had come into my mind: if a terrorist, I said to myself, were to blow up this church with all of us inside, at least one-tenth of all the hypocrisy in the world would disappear with us. So I had myself escorted out.

In grammar school he'd had an old priest as his religion teacher. "Truth is light," the priest had said one day. Montalbano, never very studious, had been a mischievous pupil, always sitting in the last row. "So that must mean that if everyone in the family tells the truth, they save on the electric bill.

But then why, when talking on the phone, did they quarrel, on average at least once every four sentences? Maybe, though the inspector, it was an effect of the distance between them becoming less and less tolerable with each passing day, since as we grow old - for every now and then one must, yes, look reality in the eye and call things by their proper names - we feel more keenly the need to have the person we love beside us.

You're eating without conviction, Inspector.' 'It's true. The fact is, I've got something on my mind.' 'The mind should be forgotten when the Lord in His grace puts such perches in front of you

La fede è una gran cosa!» esalò patre Crucillà. «Se non t'addorme, ti riposa» completò Montalbano.

Montalbano sat outside reading a good detective novel by two Swedish authors, husband and wife, in which there wasn't a page without a ferocious and justified attack on social democracy and the government. In his mind, Montalbano dedicated the book to all those who did not deign to read mystery novels because, in their opinion, they were only entertaining puzzles.

No matter what they do, our elected representatives don't give a fuck anymore about public opinion! They take drugs, frequent whores, rob, steal, cheat, sell themselves, commit perjury, make deals with the Mafia, and what happens to them? The newspapers talk about it for, oh, three days maybe? Then everybody forgets about it. But you—you who exposed the scandal, they won't forget about you, nosirree, you can count on that, and they'll make you pay for it.

Non credo rivedrà mai più la sua amica Laura. E se mai la rivedrà non penso che sarà in grado di riconoscerla" "Ma lei è riuscito a capire se era almeno felice?" "Felice? Non saprei, forse non è la parola giusta. Era... in armonia, ecco. In armonia con se stessa. E col mondo

Lo sai perchè su di te soffia il ghibli? Perchè tu sei il deserto. Il vento fa scomparire le orme appena stampate sul tuo corpo. Non credere che queste mie parole siano dettate da rancore, gelosia o altro. Nascono solo dal bene che ti ho voluto. Ti auguro non che tu possa trovare la felicità, ma che nel tuo deserto possa accadere il miracolo di un'oasi. Addio, Laura

He also remembered a comedy he had read in his youth called "The Deluge", which claimed the next great flood would be caused not by water from the heavens but by the backing up and over flowing of all the toilets, latrines, cesspools and septic tanks in the world which would start chucking up their contents relentlessly until we all drowned in our own shit.