Joseph Luzzi > Quotes

“In the United States, death is something to avoid talking about and to treat as a disease that can be cured with the right diet and workout routine. In Italy, death is woven into the fabric of everyday life.”
― Joseph Luzzi, My Two Italies

“We all know, he writes, “that laws without customs are not enough,” and that unlike other civic nations, Italians lack “great moral principles.” In Leopardi’s view, this resistance to collective thinking made Italians the most cynical of peoples, incapable of believing in the public good and unwilling to sacrifice their private concerns.”
― Joseph Luzzi, My Two Italies

“The two dictators toured the city’s historic sites, including a several-hour visit to the Uffizi and a walk across Vasari’s secret corridor above the Ponte Vecchio. While Mussollini was bored stiff by the sightseeing (“It would take a week to get through all this art,” he muttered under his breath), Hitler was absorbed by masterpieces like Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo.19 The”
― Joseph Luzzi, Botticelli's Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance

“When [the Nun of Monza] was born, her father the prince wanted to give her a name which would carry immediate suggestion of the cloistered life, and which had been borne by a saint of noble birth; so he called her Gertrude [after a famous medieval mystic]. Dolls dressed as nuns were the first toys that she received; then she was given little images of female saints, always nuns again. These presents were always accompanied by urgent instructions to look after them well, as precious possessions, and by the affirmative question: “Pretty, aren’t they?”
― Joseph Luzzi, My Two Italies

“We Italian Americans, on the other hand, commemorate our past only to remind ourselves how far we have travelled from it.”
― Joseph Luzzi, My Two Italies

“The Nazis put party sympathizers in high-ranking positions and removed many museum personnel, especially those of Jewish origin, as well as works associated with what they believed to be a decadent avant-gardism (what Hitler called “degenerate art”).14 The Nazi Party destroyed (or secretly added to their personal collections) scores of modern artworks from Lippmann’s Kupferstichkabinett, especially German Expressionist prints and drawings.15 All told, the regime removed some 16,000 pieces of art from German collections, including 64 paintings, 26 sculptures, and 326 drawings from Berlin’s National Gallery.16”
― Joseph Luzzi, Botticelli's Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance

“For Petrini, Slow Food is not just the title of a book or the name of a movement; it reflects the conviction that eating should be an enjoyable experience consisting of varied, healthy, and flavorful food—the opposite of fast food. “The Official Slow Food Manifesto” argues that the twentieth century, “which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model.” The ascendancy of “speed,” along with what Petrini calls “Fast Life,” now “disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods.” According to Petrini, “a firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.”
― Joseph Luzzi, My Two Italies

“But the good people of Cosenza regarded me as if I had alighted from a spaceship. Like twins shipped off to different homes at birth, our bodies declared a common biology, but our bearing, gestures, and clothing suggested otherwise.”
― Joseph Luzzi, My Two Italies

“Calabrians, to be sure, also dreamed of moving to Florence or Turin for a better way of life, and many did leave the south for such great factories of the north as Fiat. But up north, a southerner’s accent, clothes, and table manners would expose him as an outsider.”
― Joseph Luzzi, My Two Italies