Quotes from Adriana Trigiani

Fall in love with a plain girl. Plain girls never turn bitter. They appreciate their portion, no matter how meager A small pearl is enough. They never long for the diamond. Beautiful girls have high expectations. You bring them daisies, and they want roses. You buy them a hat, ad they want the matching coat. It's a well so deep you cannot fill it. I know. I've tried.

miss my mother." She dried her tears on her handkerchief. "You never get over the loss. The

Will I?" "Grief is never as bad as it is when you first feel it. The trick is to walk with it. Make it a part of who you are. Don't rail against it.

She learned that time could not be the measurement for the things that lasted. Sometimes what endured was that which changed us in a matter of moments, not years.

Two families—one side wears tuxedos and holds a gas can, the other wears a frilly gown and holds a match.

You really believe in the power of books, don't you?" "Whatever it is that you're feeling, whatever it is you have a question about, whatever it is that you long to know, there is some book, somewhere, with the key. You just have to search for it.

When you find your purpose in life, it changes you. You see things differently. More clearly. You love more and better. You solve problems and are able to help others solve theirs because you stand in strength.

You cannot have the joy of Easter Sunday without the agony of Good Friday," her mother reminded them. "No cross, no crown," she'd say in a dialect only her children understood.

There was a fleeting cold front, the slight judgment that said immigrants were a necessary fact of life, one that must be tolerated but never truly accepted. The only way to ever become a permanent part of America's greatness would be to defend it. Cassidy

For a woman, love is the highest dream, and if a man promises to build a ladder tall enough to reach it, she believes him, hikes up her skirt, and follows him to the stars. Now

A cold sentiment deserved a frigid end.

When you marry a man from your own village, you know how he salts his food.

There were all manners of souvenirs and trinkets for sale when Ciro and Luigi disembarked from the ferry into the port of lower Manhattan. Signs advertising Sherman Turner cigars, Zilita Black tobacco, and Roisin's Doughnuts graced rolling carts selling Sally Dally Notions and Flowers by Yvonne Benne. The stands competed for the immigrant business. Ciro and Luigi came face to face with the engine of American life: You work, and then you spend.

You're a drunk, and it's no wonder your husband stays in West Virginia.

Everything is a grace.

The apprentice system is a mainstay in the working life of Italians, but this particular movement was as political as it was artistic, born of the need to lift the Italians out of poverty after the war. The movement spread, thus the proliferation of handcrafted Italian goods, some of which still exist today. For the families who trained together, and opened their own businesses, branding was born.

The operators were bound together by what they were running from—poverty in all its forms, despair, hunger, decimated families—as well as what they hoped to gain. Their imaginations were filled with American treasures:

Ciro was beginning to understand the concept of America, and it was changing his view of the world and of himself. A man could think clearly in a place that gave breadth to his dreams. There

May God bless you and give you what you need because what you want will get you in trouble." Figliolo blessed

Better meant American. Better meant safe, clean, honest, and true. Dreams of every size and description lulled them into restful sleep at night and fueled them through their backbreaking days. At

The haves are the haves until they have not." Now, Savattini understood the riddle.

The wise man leaves the past behind like a pair of boots he has outgrown.

There wasn't time for artifice; their connection was the destination, not the dance that preceded it.

There are many gifts a friend brings to a woman's life. History. Empathy. Honesty. Lucky was the woman who kept a childhood friend because that friend remembered what you looked like, who you were, and your people. Lucky was the woman who had a friend from the age of ten, when girls were brave, gutsy, and full