frisco - فریسکو

“So what was in this building before historical materialism?'

'Before what?'

'You know, back then, under the old regime?'

'Oh. Under the old regime my master lived here.'

'A bourgeois?'

'You're a bourgeois yourself! He wasn't a bourgeois. He was a marshal of the nobility.'

'So he was a proletarian, then?'

'You're a proletarian yourself! I told you loud and clear, a marshal.'

The conversation with the clever dvornik with a vague understanding of the class structure of society would have lasted god knows how long if the young man hadn't made a decisive move.”
― Ilya Ilf, The Twelve Chairs

“But I am I. And I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind”
― Jack London, Martin Eden

“Guarda i quartieri moderni fuori le mura scendere dai colli al mare oleoso e verde cupo, i bei palazzi e portici dei tempi di Baccaredda (scrittore e sindaco, amato e carogna) e il lascito architettonico di quest’epoca ai futuri: il cubo luttuoso e vitreo che nasconde i vicoli del porto e offende il municipio bianco e danzante cui si è affiancato con protervia da funzionario viceregio d’altri tempi (non è escluso che i futuri decidano di amarlo e cantarlo… o lo smonteranno vetrata per vetrata e lo sposteranno in campagna oltre Palli e invece delle nere geometrie che spengono la luce e l’allegria vedranno panchine, fontane, palme e jacarandas?).

Ruggero Gunale guarda la città che si allontana. Saluta torri pisane e campanili. Sillaba a se stesso: “La mitezza non incute rispetto né suscita vero compatimento. Anzi: godono a schiacciarti.”
(pag. 29)”
― Sergio Atzeni, Il quinto passo è l'addio

“Americans don't like to waste time on stupid things, for example, on the torturous process of coming up with names for their towns. And really, why strain yourself when so many wonderful names already exist in the world?

The entrance to the town of Moscow is shown in the photograph. That's right, an absolutely authentic Moscow, just in the state of Ohio, not in the USSR in Moscow province.

There's another Moscow in some other state, and yet another Moscow in a third state. On the whole, every state has the absolute right to have its very own Moscow.”
― Ilya Ilf, Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers