Quotes from Donna Leon

She reminds me a bit of those women in nineteenth-century novels, interested in the moral improvement of their inferiors,' she said.

was he trapped in a nest of vipers able to worm themselves into people's sympathies? Was he another one?

I don't know how familiar you are with the Venetian audience, but the most complimentary thing that can be said of them is that they are dogs. They don't go to the theatre to listen to music or hear beautiful singing; they go to wear their new clothes and be seen in them by their friends, and those friends are there for the same reasons.

He heard footsteps coming from the kitchen and turned to see his wife approaching. In that instant he wanted to take some sort of emotional photograph so that he could, sometime in the future when things were different, pull it out of his memory and look at it and say, 'I've lived a happy life'.

There are days when I think everything's getting worse, then there are days when I know they are. But then the sun comes out and I change my mind.

Brunetti thought of Parliament in the way most Italians thought of their mothers-in-law.

their protests, and plunged ahead.

At times Brunetti thought Italy was a country where everyone knew everything while no one was willing to say anything. In private, everyone was eager to comment with absolute certainty on the secret doings of politicians, Mafia leaders, movie stars; put them into a situation where their remarks might have legal consequences, and Italy turned into the largest clam bed in the world.

involuntarily

During the golden age of the Most Serene Republic, the Doge used to perform an elaborate yearly ceremony, tossing a gold ring into the waters of the Grand Canal to solemnize the wedding of the city to the waters that gave it life, wealth, and power.

It seems to me it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference," he said. "Between what?" "The criminal and the wrong." "Why do you think that is, Guido?" "I'm not sure. Perhaps because, as you said before, we don't believe in the old things anymore, and we haven't found anything new, anything else, to believe in.

Her glance put him on the scales and weighed him, and then she said, 'Less trouble accepting reality, I think.

If you work with only your body, all you'll do is work for enough to eat.

Cicero's Against Verres and its denunciation of a corrupt official, Brunetti's

when children loved you, you knew everything, and when they were angry with you, you knew nothing?

He often thought that the only safe procedure a person could undergo at the Ospedale Civile was an autopsy. it was the only time a patient ran no risk.

the really hard ones, just bring them right to me.' 'And what will you do, Papà, tell me how you can't help because maths is so different from when you went to school?' Chiara asked with a laugh. 'Isn't that what I always do with your maths homework, cara?

Then, as if Truth had reminded her to whom she was speaking, she added, 'But I wasn't surprised.

If criminals can't believe in an illegal deal with the police, what can they believe in?

Both of them had always taken delight in this most wonderful of holdovers from the academic Stone Age, the fact that the rector of the university was addressed as "Il Magnifico Rettore," the only thing Brunetti had learned in twenty years on the fringes of the university that had managed to make academic life sound interesting to him.

I'm glad I'm sitting down, Guido. You make my knees go all wobbly.

I give only one example of the falsity of gossip and hearsay, and I urge my readers to beware of incredible tales, however widely they might be believed and instead to believe the unvarnished truth.

And today, to the best of his knowledge, no one spoke against it, either, but today the silence was based on the belief that slavery had ceased to exist.

In the end, no matter how beautiful or precious, what object had any value in comparison to life?