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Quotes About Naples

People in the U.S. are more reserved, whereas in Naples they'll hit each other and then kiss each other a second after.
~ Lucy DeVito
Angus smiled. "So nothing's certain, then?" "That's right," said Big Lou. "Except death and taxes," interjected Matthew. "Isn't that how the saying goes?" "They don't pay taxes in Italy," observed Angus. "I knew a painter in Naples who never paid taxes–ever. Very good painter too." "What happened to him?" asked Matthew. "He died," said Angus. 33.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
On the 24th of February, 1810, the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples.
~ Alexandre Dumas
Here Naples was not bathed by the sea. I was sure that no one had ever seen this place or remembered it. In this dark pit only the fire of sexuality burned bright under an eerie black sky.
~ Anna Maria Ortese
Les Siciliens sont, après ou même avant les Napolitains, le peuple le plus criard de la Terre. Cette loquacité fait le désespoir d'un brave colonel anglais qui a pris du service dans l'armée de Garibaldi et qui s'est chargé de l'instruction de deux ou trois cents recrues.
~ Alexandre Dumas
Poor Mrs. Charles sat between her silent companions terrified at the course of events, and a little bored. She was a rubbishy little creature, and she knew it. A telegram had dragged her from Naples to the death-bed of a woman whom she had scarcely known. A word from her husband had plunged her into mourning. She desired to mourn inwardly as well, but she wished that Mrs. Wilcox, since fated to die, could have died before the marriage, for then less would have been expected of her.
~ E.M. Forster
Valencia is a pure Mediterranean city; it is a city like Naples or Palermo, like Rome a little bit. Walking in the old town has a little bit of the flavor of the old city of Rome.
~ Santiago Calatrava
He's delighted to read what the mayor of Naples says about driving there. Naples is the most chaotic city for drivers on earth. Ed loved it—he got to drive on the sidewalk while the pedestrians filled the street. "A green light is a green light, avanti, avanti," the mayor explained. "A red light—just a suggestion." And yellow? he was asked. "Yellow is for gaiety.
~ Frances Mayes
Life can have an ironic geometry. Starting from the age of thirteen or fourteen I had aspired to a bourgeois decorum, proper Italian, a good life, cultured and reflective. Naples had seemed a wave that would drown me. I didn't think the city could contain life forms different from those I had known as a child, violent or sensually lazy, tinged with sentimental vulgarity or obtusely fortified in defense of their own wretched degradation.
~ Elena Ferrante
Naples was the great European metropolis where faith in technology, in science, in economic development, in the kindness of nature, in history that leads of necessity to improvement, in democracy, was revealed, most clearly and far in advance, to be completely without foundation.
~ Elena Ferrante
Yes, Imma was consoled but only because Lila was introducing her to a permanent stream of splendors and miseries, a cyclical Naples where everything was marvelous and everything became gray and irrational and everything sparkled again, as when a cloud passes over the sun and the sun appears to flee, a timid, pale disk, near extinction, but not look, once the cloud dissolves it's suddenly dazzling again, so bright you have to shield your eyes with your hand.
~ Elena Ferrante
My return to Naples was like having a defective umbrella that suddenly closes over your head in a gust of wind.
~ Elena Ferrante
My tone must have seemed hostile, even though I wasn't angry or offended; there was just a touch of sarcasm. He tried to respond but he did so in an awkward, muddled way, half in dialect, half in Italian. He said he was sure that his mother was wandering around Naples as usual.
~ Elena Ferrante
I felt that in me fear could not put down roots, and even the lava, the fiery stream of melting matter that I imagined inside the earthly globe, and the fear it provoked in me, settled in my mind in orderly sentences, in harmonious images, became a pavement of black stones like the streets of Naples, a pavement where I was always and no matter what the center.
~ Elena Ferrante
Naples had seemed a wave that would drown me.
~ Elena Ferrante
Ah, there is no city that gives off so much noise and such a clamor as Naples.
~ Elena Ferrante
I spent time at my grandfather Dino's gourmet store where he brought in chefs from Naples to cook. I thought of them as rock stars.
~ Giada De Laurentiis
When Sicily became part of the Kingdom of Naples, Palermo lost its capital status. It was never to regain it. It is now essentially a baroque city, beautiful though sadly dilapidated. But the setting – the Conca d'Oro or Shell of Gold – is as lovely as ever, and the Sicilian parliament still meets in King Roger's old palace – so all, perhaps, is not lost.
~ John Julius Norwich
I have had so many fine moments in Naples, but the first that comes to mind is when I signed the contract. I immediately loved this city and these wonderful people.
~ Dries Mertens
Naples is famous for its handmade ties so I always buy them there.
~ Gino D'Acampo
When riding my old Harley a ninety per at midnight down the Via Roma in Naples, I kept one consolation firmly in mind: If anything goes wrong, I'll never have time to regret it.
~ Edward Abbey
What you hear from other Italians is that Naples isn't even Italy. "But that's a very Italian attitude to start with, a not-quite nation of city-states for whom the next village over will always be the worst place on earth.
~ Anthony Bourdain
The Neapolitans have a special affection for Argentines. They are similar to us as well as having Diego Maradona in their hearts.
~ Gonzalo Higuain
I can still remember watching Italy win the 1982 World Cup. I was just an eight-year-old kid in Naples, my hometown, watching the games with a bunch of people in the houses of relatives and friends. I can recall that when Italy scored, we would shout and hug, even though we did not all know each other.
~ Fabio Cannavaro