Quotes from Gina Buonaguro

I needed to bring my own gifts to my new home, not resist them, not sway to and fro like the tidal waters of the lagoon, but rather chart my own course through the shallows like an experienced boatman.

Lice breeds lice, and sin breeds sin.

Venetian laws last but a week. They keep making new laws because no one follows the old ones…. Or enforces them.

It was not in my nature to gossip, which put me at odds with most of my sisters at San Zaccaria, who twittered hearsay like so many flocks of birds.

We are the bones of this city, the heart, the womb. The hidden structure and architecture behind the beautiful facades. We are unseen yet leaned upon, vessels yet not empty, the home for our families. The hopes of our city are thrust upon us, and we will be punished if we fail.

I imagined myself a bird, looking down on our city, the Grand Canal like a snake slithering through stone, the city on either side like two hands clasped in prayer

One year from now, a decade, a century, half a millennium, will things be different? Dare we dream it? When we are seen for ourselves, not just as the conduit of progeny, heirs, lineage, not just as beautiful objects to be protected, inspected, appreciated, but for who we are at the core . . .

A midwife knows too much . . . But if she is truly a wise woman, she knows when to keep her mouth shut.

Knowing I should get into the habit of praying on my knees before bed, I shrugged and instead huddled under the bedcovers, the rose clasped in my hands close to my heart. The stem was very long, with all thorns removed, and an old Venetian saying came to mind: The longer the stem, the greater the love.

I believe such compassion and prudence is good politics on the part of Mother Marina. If our convent cannot be completely virtuous, better to give the appearance of being so. Thus she keeps her nuns happy as well as the government and the church.

You know what they say: Better one true friend than a hundred relatives.

To leave Venice felt as foreign as flying to the stars.

I had no answers, just a never-ending list of questions that I scrawled out until my hand ached, knowing I was searching for a loophole that increasingly felt like a noose.

Venetians prefer being merchants to philosophers.

The day was perfect. Hot, yes, but with a refreshing zephyr sidling in from the west. The lagoon was flecked with small islands, and beyond lay the more ominous mainland, the papal army camped somewhere on it. But here, on this beautiful islet far from our usual universe, a warrior pope seemed a figment.

The next week passed in a haze of mourning, as thick and disorienting as the unrelenting fog that crept over the stones of Venice each morning.

The evening blessed us with a sunset to rival a painting by Carpaccio in its colours. The sky mutated from shades of ultramarine and azure to vermilion and ochre, then strips of violet and finally indigo.

We stood for a moment, the brackish canal water teething at the stone,the last of the stars fading as the sky transformed from black to indigo. A pair of swans like large white clouds floated on the water, their heads tucked under their wings, as a gondola pulled up, a lantern on the prow, the gondolier on the stern, rubbing his sleepy eyes.

Despite the convent walls, when I was writing, my mind was free.