Daniela Sacerdoti > Quotes

“She’s my salvation. I burn, she’s water; I suffocate, she’s air – I can just imagine, when I am one with her, how light will flood my eyes, how the night will part and let me out into the day. When I break her, the light she has inside will come out, like a seal breaks to reveal the hidden message – and she’ll have to share that light with me. I’ll be saved, and she’ll be the one who falls. I’ll burn her down; I’ll kill her and give her life again. I’ll be true to her. I’ll never leave her, never.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Dreams

“Beside her I felt grey, like she had all the colours I'd ever need.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Take Me Home

“I went to the kitchen and unburied my treasure. Twenty-five-year-old Lagavullin. Drinking it is like a long, lingering, passionate kiss. Fire and wind and peat and sea, all mixed together.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Watch Over Me

“Not at all. Cooking is cool. I’ll make you one shaped like the moon.”
“Why the moon?”
“Because you remind me of the moon,” he said, and looked into his bowl. Sarah blushed.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Dreams

“I think I want to believe that all the twists and turns take us to where we need to be.” “If that is true, you”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Villa

“love never dies and that what awaits us is the love we felt when we were alive. That beyond the fear and pain, love is there to catch us when we fall.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Watch Over Me

“Bosconero’s homes were hundreds of years old. Nothing like this has happened here before, nothing so powerful as to wipe out the place. You know, there are laws, in Italy, on how houses should be built or strengthened in highly seismic areas. They’re often ignored. As you can see.’ ‘It can’t be!’ ‘This is Italy, Luce. Things are never straightforward, here. And it’s the common people who pay the price, as always. There will be an investigation on why the tower fell, for example, after having been refurbished according to the law. Too late for those who were under it.’ I had no answer to that. I proceeded to translate the whole thing to Ethan, who was as shocked as me. ‘Also, if there were tremors just before… why was there no alarm given?’ Ethan asked. ‘Maybe it was all too quick,’ I replied in English, but I also translated the question for Massimo. ‘Another Italian mystery,’ Massimo replied cryptically.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Lost Village

“Inary was heartbroken. That was it. She lost her voice because she was so full of pain, she didn’t know how to deal with it and she shut down. What she needed was someone to help her through the trauma, someone who could guide her. I was sure that she could find a good psychotherapist somewhere close to her . . . maybe in Aberdeen.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Take Me Home

“believe we all only love once. Except sometimes, the one we are meant to love is not the one we think. Sometimes we lose someone, we think our life is over and we get frozen in the moment of despair. But it can turn out that, in spite of all that anguish, our true soulmate is actually still out there. Life can give us another chance – once the one we thought was our soulmate is gone, the real one comes along.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Watch Over Me

“And so, Mira's life began. The pattern of disappointing everyone's expectations continued as she grew to be defiant when she should have been compliant, and sickly when she should have been strong - not a very inviting prospect as a wife for another rich family's heir - but most of all, she bore the primal fault that had thwarted so many lives, in so many places, in so many ages and times since the very beginning of human history: she was a girl, when she should have been a boy”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Island

“Love takes many different forms: it’s not straightforward, like a river to the sea, it’s a winding stream that fights its way on.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Take Me Home

“Please, remember that when everywhere is darkness, the light is always within you.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Bookseller's Daughter

“Nothing stays still, I realised. Even if you embrace change, change will always come faster than you want.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Tuscan Sister's Secret

“His and Elvira's project was so worthy. I was almost jealous that he should have this goal, this singlemindedness in his life. I had no idea what to do with myself yet - there was nothing I wanted desperately, or I believed in with all my heart. I hoped that this trip would uncover more than my family history: I hoped it would uncover...me.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Island

“Two things I’d learned, in my brief time as a doctor: that poverty and ignorance do even more damage than sickness; and that war kills in many ways, not just by catching a bullet in your body.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Villa

“How could we, even for a second, face what really happened – the way someone was there and then she was not, gone forever, gone into non-existence – without falling on our knees and screaming in terror, thinking one day it will happen to us, that we’ll close our eyes and never open them again? How can we ever be so brave as to gaze into the deep, senseless darkness that awaits us and still keep on living? If darkness is what awaits us. Because I know now that it isn’t.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Watch Over Me

“path,”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Island

“When you let go of hope, you have nothing.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Watch Over Me

“One thing I knew: nobody would ever love me or understand me as my father had done. He'd left me alone in a world I did not belong to”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Island

“So much of our world is defined by our parents being alive, a barrier between ourselves and our turn to die. When our parents go, there’s no more protection. We are on our own, exposed.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Watch Over Me

“How easy, how automatic, even, it is for mothers to take the weight of the world on their shoulders, to feel responsible for every little piece of their children’s world. As if we were omnipotent, as if somehow we should know how to shield them from everything, and we should do that all the time. And if anything goes wrong, it is our fault – we should have predicted it, we should have stopped it, we should have done something.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Set Me Free

“I think I owe you an explanation, about what happened between us, and the way I was afterwards. You know, the way I said it had been a mistake. I never planned to be in a relationship again, after Lewis. But with you . . . I don’t know, things just seemed to happen. The problem is, my life is a bit of a mess right now. I can’t think of anything but Emily and I can’t speak and my brother is in a bad way. Yes, it’s all a big mess. I just couldn’t cope with more complications. It’s so much better if we are just friends. I hope you understand, and please don’t be hurt. It’s just me being all wrong, right now.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Take Me Home

“I tilted my head to once side, staring at the piece of paper.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Villa

“Sometimes I believed my own lie and acted like nothing had happened; sometimes I was sure I would never recover. I went through my life on autopilot, breathing in, breathing out, putting one foot in front of the other, eating and sleeping automatically, because it was necessary for survival.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Don't Be Afraid

“have nothing to be ashamed about. Not this time. I won't have shame taint what's not tainted, in the name of the past”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Island

“I cried for a long time, the kind of sobbing you can only indulge in when you're alone, and the child inside you is doing the crying for both the little girl you were and the woman you've become”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Island

“couldn’t help it. I thought, if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll hold my son one last time. And I did, I held him in my arms again, as my body held on to itself for a brief second before dissolving again.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Watch Over Me

“The stereotype of Italians said that they were chaotic; the hospital in Bastia said otherwise. There was still a sense of sorrow all around, but greater calm. The reception was staffed again. I asked them if I could see Matilde, and because I was a blood relation I was allowed to do so, with a nurse by my side. The day before I’d been able to walk into the ICU by myself, but only a few hours later the normal protocols had been reinstated. Almost normal, because I still had to zigzag between the beds set up in corridors, to get to Matilde.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Lost Village

“What used to be on the surface had burrowed deeper, and as I sunk into my world of silence, so many things started getting clearer and clearer. Lies and illusions began to melt as I got slowly closer to my core, closer to the essence of me.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, Take Me Home

“Every moment of pain, of fear, of loneliness and confusion, every choice I’d had to make, every time I’d had to be strong and keep faith, and take risks with places and people I knew nothing about, everything was meant to lead me to here, and now.”
― Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Villa