Quotes from Donna Leon

International law, I think, and very good at it. I think I might have read something about a deal with Poland or Czechoslovakia—one of those places where they eat potatoes and dress badly—but I can't remember which.

I've always liked it about the Greeks that they kept the violence off the stage.

Perhaps the difference lay in the fact that, to the public administration, these people were problems, while to Don Alvise they were people with problems.

Well, I don't believe it any more, none of it: I have no faith and I have no hope.' Though

come face to face with this reminder of what we all know and feel uncomfortable knowing: that life plugs along, no matter what happens to any of us. It puts one foot in front of the other, whistling a tune that is dreary or merry by turn, but it always puts one foot in front of the other and moves on.

ufficio catasto

Helmut thought himself above common morality. Or perhaps he thought he'd managed to create his own, different from ours, better.

He hesitated, himself offended by the next question he had to put to her. He told himself that he was like a priest, a doctor, and that what people told him went no further, but he knew that wasn't true, knew that he would respect no confidence if it would lead him to find the person he was looking for.

We can't have Americans being murdered in this city, not with the state of tourism this year. Do you understand that?

a man in whom violence boiled below the surface in much the same way that fresh-poured polenta waited for the chance to burn the mouth of anyone who tried to eat it.

And that, Brunetti realized, was beginning to interest him a great deal, for the answer to his death must lie there, as it always did. Santore

check the prints. At the end of that time, he went back down to the lab

She had answered his questions. Whether he now had the truth was another issue entirely, one he chose not to deal with then.

Brunetti remembered when they found themselves with an excessive catch, they chose to give it away, rather than watch it rot.

Again, she put her face in her hands and wiped away the years, then let them return and looked at him.

hostages to fortune.

Brunetti was certain she had gone to Catholic schools: it was only there that children mastered the alchemical formula of untruth and hypocrisy that was sure to persuade even the most sceptical listener.

Brunetti's best friend had often said that he wanted death to take him just at the moment he laid his last lira down on a bar and said, 'Prosecco for everyone.

mother-in-law still demanded obedience and reverence while never behaving in a manner that would merit either. This alien presence, imposed upon a person's life by sheerest chance, made ever-increasing demands in return for the vain promise of domestic harmony. Resistance was futile, for opposition inevitably led to

Nor has the extent of your prosperity produced any change in you, except that it has given you the power of doing good to the utmost of your wishes. And whilst all these circumstances increase the veneration which other persons feel for you, with respect to myself, they have made me so bold, as to wish to become more familiar.

conoscienze: acquaintances, friendships, contacts and debts built up over a lifetime of dealing with a system generally agreed, even by those in its employ, perhaps especially by those in its employ, to be inefficient to the point of uselessness, prone to the abuses resultant from centuries of bribery, and encumbered by a Byzantine instinct for secrecy and lethargy.

what in God's name was the thrust of that vast expanse of displaced water doing to those stones and to the centuries-old binding that kept them in place? Suddenly the air was unbreathable as a capricious gust blew the ship's exhaust down on them for a few seconds.

hard on a curve and lost control of the

It's more important to understand people than to forgive them.