Donna Leon Quotes

• Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it.

  Donna Leon

  People, Lazy, Trying

  46 Copy quote

• This is a fallen world. People lie, the truth gets distorted, and that's the way it is. What's for dinner ?

  Donna Leon

  Lying, People, Way

  5 Copy quote

• So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that.

  Donna Leon

  Violence, Fiction, Painful

  4 Copy quote

• And I don't want to live anywhere where I am famous. It makes me very, very uncomfortable, because it conveys an advantage over people, and I don't like that.

  Donna Leon

  People, Want, Advantage

  5 Copy quote

• We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them.
  ...
  Long after he's dead, someone else will own those stupid little boxes, and then someone after him, just as someone owned them before he did. But no one ever thinks of that: objects survive us and go on living. It's stupid to believe we own them. And it's sinful for them to be so important.

  Donna Leon

  Wall, Stupid, Believe

  "Quietly in Their Sleep". Book by Donna Leon, www.wired.com. May 23, 1997.

  4 Copy quote

• favors are always for ourselves. Especially when we ask for things for other people.

  Donna Leon

  People, Favors, Asks

  4 Copy quote

• I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.

  Donna Leon

  Novel, Plans, Outlines

  7 Copy quote

• I do not take any pleasure whatsoever in being a famous person.

  Donna Leon

  Pleasure, Persons

  "A Tale Of Two Cities: Author Donna Leon's Venice". "Morning Edition" with Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne, www.npr.org. July 13, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most liberal and illumined of the nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

  Donna Leon

  Justice, Ruth, Nine

  4 Copy quote

• I never wanted to be rich or successful or famous. I just wanted to be happy and have fun.

  Donna Leon

  Fun, Successful, Rich

  4 Copy quote

• And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.

  Donna Leon

  Distance, Angel, Cities

  Donna Leon (2015). “Death In A Strange Country: (Brunetti 2)”, p.151, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• The Germans and Austrians are very polite, the Swiss are very reserved and the Spanish usually kiss me. The Brits write me letters.

  Donna Leon

  Writing, Kissing, Letters

  4 Copy quote

• Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will

  Donna Leon

  Fate, Hands, Enemy

  Donna Leon (2009). “Acqua Alta: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery”, p.132, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• I was extraordinarily lucky. I wrote a book because I wanted to see if I could write a mystery. Someone nagged me into sending it to a contest, which it won, after which I was offered a two-book contract, thus requiring the writing of a second book.

  Donna Leon

  Book, Writing, Two

  4 Copy quote

• I love music. But I've never owned a TV in my adult life, and I've never lived in a place with a television.

  Donna Leon

  Television, Tvs, Adults

  4 Copy quote

• I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book.

  Donna Leon

  Book, Talking, Ideas

  8 Copy quote

• A story begins and it always passes from the subjunctive to the declarative. And Italians don't seem to care about making a fine distinction between that which is speculation and that which is fact.

  Donna Leon

  Stories, Care, Facts

  "A Tale Of Two Cities: Author Donna Leon's Venice". "Morning Edition" with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. July 13, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• I know you shouldn't spit in your own soup but I think most crime writing is like TV and doesn't make enormous demands on one's intellect.

  Donna Leon

  Writing, Thinking, Demand

  4 Copy quote

• I have always had a particular antagonism for the military.

  Donna Leon

  Military, Antagonism, Particular

  8 Copy quote

• I don't go to the movies because I don't like films.

  Donna Leon

  Film

  4 Copy quote

• Venetians feel affection and loyalty to their city, rather than to the Italian state.

  Donna Leon

  Loyalty, Italian, Cities

  6 Copy quote

• I just go to lunch. And I never know when something is going into the file and something is not.

  Donna Leon

  Lunch, Files, Knows

  18 Copy quote

• The ending is one of my blackest, utterly without hope of any sort.

  Donna Leon

  Without Hope

  4 Copy quote

• Sit around the bars, talked to people, ate in the restaurants, and chatted with the old ladies on the street. Fishermen are pretty much that way.

  Donna Leon

  People, Bars, Way

  4 Copy quote

• All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.

  Donna Leon

  School, Murder Mysteries, Television

  5 Copy quote

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