Don Dealga

“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

“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 would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.”
― W H Auden, The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue

“...of the 10 thopusand Indian soldiers and camp followers who went into captivity at Kut, as few as one third would live to see the war's end.
....Taken to Constantinople, he [Gen. Charles Townshend British Commander of forces surrendered at Kut] spent the remainder of the war in a pleasant villa on an island on the Bosporus, where he was given the use of a Turkish naval yachtand frequently attended diplomatic receptions at the Ottoman court. Joining him in Constantinople were his 3 prized Yorkshire terriers, pets that, despitethe mear-starvation co9nditionsin Kut, had weatheredthe ordeal quite nicely. (p. 178)”
― Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East