Donna Leon > Quotes

“And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.”
― Donna Leon, Death in a Strange Country

“Though he did not believe, he was not untouched by the magic of belief ...”
― Donna Leon, Death and Judgment

“He hesitated then, anticipating the panic that came when there was nothing left to read”
― Donna Leon, Earthly Remains

“Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will”
― Donna Leon, Acqua Alta

“His clothing marked him as Italian. The cadence of his speech announced that he was Venetian. His eyes were all policeman.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them.
...
Long after he's dead, someone else will own those stupid little boxes, and then someone after him, just as someone owned them before he did. But no one ever thinks of that: objects survive us and go on living. It's stupid to believe we own them. And it's sinful for them to be so important.”
― Donna Leon, Quietly in Their Sleep

“Why are other people's prejudices so strange, while our own are so thought-out and reasonable?”
― Donna Leon, The Waters of Eternal Youth

“And will knowing what she reads make you know who she is?”
“Can you think of a better way to tell?”
― Donna Leon, Quietly in Their Sleep

“How beautiful, the grace of women; how soft their charity.”
― Donna Leon, Dressed for Death

“Why was it that, when children loved you, you knew everything, and when they were angry with you, you knew nothing?

Commissario Guido Brunetti”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“He looked down at the glass again. ‘I care that these things happen, that we poison ourselves and our progeny, that we knowingly destroy our future, but I do not believe that there is anything - and I repeat, anything - that can be done to prevent it. We are a nation of egoists. It is our glory, but it will be our destruction, for none of us can be made to concern ourselves about something as abstract as “the common good”. The best of us can rise to feeling concern for our families, but as a nation we are incapable of more.’

‘I refuse to believe that.’ Brunetti said.

‘Your refusal to believe it,’ the Count said with a smile that was almost tender, ‘makes it no less true, Guido.”
― Donna Leon, Death in a Strange Country

“Vianello had the knack of getting people to talk. Especially if they were Venetians, the people he interviewed invariably warmed to this large, sweet-tempered man who gave every appearance of speaking Italian reluctantly, who was only too glad to lapse into their common dialect, a linguistic change that often carried its speakers along to unconscious revelation. ”
― Donna Leon, Death and Judgment

“For reasons he had never understood, she read a different newspaper each morning, spanning the political spectrum from right to left, and languages from French to English. Years ago, when he had first met her and understood her even less, he had asked about this. Her response, he came to realize only years later, made perfect sense: ‘I want to see how many different ways the same lies can be told.’ Nothing he had read in the ensuing years had come close to suggesting that her approach was wrong.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Though everyone in the bar knew who he was, no one asked him about the death, though one old man did rustle his newspaper suggestively.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Perception of personal danger very often set people on the path of virtue.”
― Donna Leon, About Face

“Her mask gave no sign of how this affected her.”
― Donna Leon, About Face

“Only the good deserve to hope.”
― Donna Leon, Earthly Remains

“You really love to gossip, don't you?” he asked, wishing she had brought him a glass of wine.
“Yes, I suppose I do,” she answered, sounding surprised at the realization. “You think that's why I love reading novels so much?”
― Donna Leon, Suffer the Little Children

“...when scores of indicted criminals sit in parliament who could believe in the rule of law...”
― Donna Leon, A Question of Belief

“Italian to the core, he did not for an instant doubt that a man could be passionately devoted to the wife he betrayed with other women.”
― Donna Leon, A Noble Radiance

“She was not beautiful, but she had a pleasant face, the sort that would wear well through life, becoming more attractive as she grew older.”
― Donna Leon, Suffer the Little Children

“I think reading a translation is an act of faith.”
― Donna Leon

“Most people — however much they might deny it — had an idea of what they were getting into when they got into it.”
― Donna Leon, About Face

“We never know them well. Do we?”
“Who?”
“Real people.”
“What do you mean, real people?”
“As opposed to people in books,” Paola explained. “They’re the only ones we ever know well. Or know truly.”
― Donna Leon, A Sea of Troubles

“Lampedusa had it right—things had to seem to change so that things could remain the same.”
― Donna Leon, A Venetian Reckoning

“She believed that books served as a mirror of the person who accumulated them.”
― Donna Leon, Through a Glass, Darkly

“Women don’t use knives,’ Griffoni answered, reciting it as though she were Euclid listing another axiom. Although he agreed with her, Brunetti was curious about the basis for her belief. ‘You offering proof of that?’ ‘Kitchens,’ she said laconically. ‘Kitchens?’ ‘The knives are kept in the kitchen, and their husbands pass through there every day, countless times, yet very few of them get stabbed. That’s because women don’t use knives, and they don’t stab people.”
― Donna Leon, The Waters of Eternal Youth

“Once, walking with him, Paola had stopped and asked him what he was thinking about, and the fact that she was the only person in the world he would not be embarrassed to tell just what it was he had been thinking about at that moment convinced him, though a thousand things had already done so, that this was the woman he wanted to marry, had to marry, would marry.”
― Donna Leon, Dressed for Death

“a line from Donizetti’s Anna Bolena flashed through his memory—‘If those who judge me are those who have already condemned me, I have no chance.”
― Donna Leon, Fatal Remedies

“He hesitated then, anticipating the panic that came when there was nothing left to read.
- Guido Brunetti”
― Donna Leon, Earthly Remains