Norman Lewis > Quotes

“I am looking for the people who have always been there, and belong to the places they live. The others I do not wish to see.”
― Norman Lewis

“There is a strong and fairly substantial theory in India as elsewhere that the gypsies of Europe originated in tribes driven out by Indian population displacements of the remote past.”
― Norman Lewis, A Goddess in the Stones: Travels in India

“Once in a while, she said, the patients put on a theatrical show here, and beneath the stage a magnificent grand piano awaited the next production or display of the musical talents of an inmate. I congratulated her on this impressive piece of furniture and she smiled with pleasure. A moment later she was called away, and idly lifting the lid over the keyboard I was faced with the fact that the piano possessed no keys. It was a discovery which at that moment seemed of extreme symbolical significance.”
― Norman Lewis, A Goddess in the Stones: Travels in India

“Remember this: your vocabulary indicates the alertness and range of your mind. The words you know show the extent of your understanding of what's going on in the world. The size of your vocabulary varies directly with the degree to which you are growing intellectually.”
― Norman Lewis, Word Power Made Easy

“Even the rickshaw coolie, given, to be on the safe side, double his normal fee, takes the money in grim silence and immediately looks away. It is most uncomfortable to feel oneself as an object of this universal detestation , a mere foreign-devil in fact.”
― Norman Lewis, A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam

“the sacrifice of the village of Altavilla, shelled out of existence because it might have contained Germans.”
― Norman Lewis, Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy

“Due scugnizzi davano la caccia a un gatto zoppo, la cui morte avrebbe regalato alle loro magre esistenze un breve divertimento (223).”
― Norman Lewis, Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy

“(The pastor) was concerned only with the natives' spiritual welfare, and their material conditions were no interest of his whatever. One thing could be said in favour of the plantations, in fact, and that was that a man working there was at least put out of the way of temptation. His view was that it didn't really matter what happened to a man in this world so long as he had acquired the priceless treasure of Faith. When Jesus said that 'He that believeth in me shall be saved' he was not referring to this life.”
― Norman Lewis, A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam

“Russo’s participation in the ritual strengthened the theory that the origins of the Mafia were pre-Christian rather than dating from the Norman conquest of Sicily.”
― Norman Lewis, In Sicily

“Bandit monks and mafiosi monks were nothing new to the long-suffering inhabitants of rural Sicily.”
― Norman Lewis, Honoured Society: The Sicilian Mafia observed

“We were a single body,’ Pisciotta said, ‘bandits, police and Mafia, like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
― Norman Lewis, Honoured Society: The Sicilian Mafia observed

“Under alle omstendigheter, og da skyver jeg alle spørsmål om mine egne mangler til side, er jeg ankommet på et tidspunkt da disse folkene i sine hjerter må være grundig syke og kvalme av oss. For et år siden frigjorde vi dem fra fascistmonsteret, og de sitter fortsatt der og gjør sitt beste for å smile høflig til oss - like sultne som alltid og mer plaget av sykdommer enn noensinne, i ruinene av sin vakre by der lov og orden har opphørt å gjelde. Og hva er gevinsten de til slutt kan vinne? Demokratiets gjenfødelse. Den vidunderlige utsikten til en vakker dag å bli i stand til å velge sine egne herskere fra en liste over mektige menn, hvorav de flestes korrupthet er alment kjent og akseptert med trett resignasjon. Benito Mussolinis dager må fremstå som et tapt paradis sammenlignet med dette.”
― Norman Lewis, Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy