Venice Quotes - Page 5

• Descendants of pigeons once fed by Keats, Byron, George Sand, Chopin and many other famous lovers are still being fed, and the sudden sound when they all rise together, frightened away, is like the sound of giant sails flapping.

  Anais Nin

  Together, Sound, Giants

  7 Copy quote

• In memory Venice is always magic.

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Memories, Magic

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1989). “Italian Days”, p.92, Atlantic Monthly Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is still one of which you never speak.' Marco Polo bowed his head. 'Venice,' the Khan said. Marco smiled. 'What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?' The emperor did not turn a hair. 'And yet I have never heard you mention that name.' And Polo said: 'Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.

  Italo Calvino

  Believe, Hair, Talking

  5 Copy quote

• Venice was and is full of lost places where people put up for sale the last worn bits of their souls, hoping no one will buy.

  Ray Bradbury

  People, Soul, Lasts

  Ray Bradbury (2013). “Death is a Lonely Business”, p.17, HarperCollins UK

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• To live in Venice is like being domesticated in the heart of an opal.

  Lilian Whiting

  Heart, Opal

  14 Copy quote

• To go out in a gondola at night is to reconstruct in one's imagination the true Venice, the Venice of the past alive with romance, elopements, abductions, revenged passions, intrigues, adulteries, denouncements, unaccountable deaths, gambling, lute playing and singing.

  Peggy Guggenheim

  Passion, Past, Night

  38 Copy quote

• I don't want to be in my car all day. I love getting up in the morning in Venice and walking my dogs down to the café to get my tea, and then perhaps going to a bookstore and sitting and reading, then walking to the beach.

  Jessica Chastain

  Dog, Beach, Morning

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists-incredible as it seems. It is the same reassurance that a looking-glass offers us: the guarantee that we are real.

  Mary McCarthy

  Real, Glasses, Guarantees That

  Mary McCarthy (1956). “Venice observed”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Prés: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.

  Cyril Connolly

  Country, Nice, Lying

  "The Unquiet Grave" by Cyril Connolly, (Part 2), 1951.

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... in the eyes of its visitors, Venice has no reality of its own. Anyone visiting the place has already seen so many pictures of it that they can only attempt to view it via these clichés, and they take home photographs of Venice that are similar to the ones they already knew. Venice [is] becoming like one of those painted backdrops that photographers use in their studio.

  Christian Boltanski

  Eye, Home, Reality

  9 Copy quote

• First, my frame of reference for the Britten opera shifted. I'd always thought of Britten's approach in Death in Venice as another exploration of the plight of the individual whose aspirations are at odds with those of the surrounding community: his last opera returning to the themes of Peter Grimes. As I read and listened and thought, however, Billy Budd came to seem a more appropriate foil for Death in Venice.

  Philip Kitcher

  Odds, Community, Plight

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If anything can rival Venice in its beauty, it must be its reflection at sunset in the Grand Canal.

  Peggy Guggenheim

  Sunset, Reflection, Rivals

  59 Copy quote

• In Venice in the Middle Ages there was once a profession for a man called a codega--a fellow you hired to walk in front of you at night with a lit lantern, showing you the way, scaring off thieves and demons, bringing you confidence and protection through the dark streets.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Dark, Night, Men

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.101, A&C Black

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• When Michelangelo was introduced to Titian, he said... that Titian's colouring and his style much pleased him, but that it was a pity that in Venice men did not learn to draw well from the beginning, and that those painters did not pursue a better method in their studies.

  Giorgio Vasari

  Men, Style, Study

  4 Copy quote

• Venice would be a fine city if it were only drained.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  Cities, Would Be, Fine

  17 Copy quote

• This grossly advertised wonder [Venice], this gold idol with clay feet, this trompe-l'oeil, this painted deception, this cliche-what intelligent iconoclast could fail to experience a destructive impulse in her presence?

  Mary McCarthy

  Intelligent, Idols, Feet

  4 Copy quote

• Famously sunny Los Angeles has long been known as the homeless capital of America, from beachy communities like Santa Monica and Venice to Skid Row downtown.

  John Carlos Frey

  America, Long, Community

  Source: www.pbs.org

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The cool parts - the parts that have won Dubai its reputation as 'the Vegas of the Middle East' or 'the Venice of the Middle East' or 'the Disney World of the Middle East, if Disney World were the size of San Francisco and out in a desert' - have been built in the last ten years.

  George Saunders

  Dubai, Years, San Francisco

  George Saunders (2012). “The Brain-Dead Megaphone”, p.22, A&C Black

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there was no Hollywood, no next movie, no deal at Warner Brothers, no place in Malibu or Venice, I would still be really happy.

  Susan Downey

  Brother, Hollywood, Next

  "Susan Downey: Iron Woman" by Kimberly Cutter, www.harpersbazaar.com. December 9, 2009.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the custom of Venice to paint on canvas, either because it does not split and is not worm-eaten, or because pictures can be made of any size desired, or else for convenience... so that they can be sent anywhere with very little trouble and expense.

  Giorgio Vasari

  Splits, Littles, Size

  Giorgio Vasari (1963). “The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects”, London : Dent ; New York : Dutton

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the credulous- poets and honeymooners.

  Mary McCarthy

  Cities, Doubt, Mind

  Mary McCarthy (1956). “Venice observed”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Situated on an island which I think it will one day cover, it rises like Venice from the sea, and like that fairest of cities in the days of her glory, receives into its lap tribute of all the riches of the earth.

  Frances Trollope

  New York, Thinking, Islands

  Frances Trollope (2014). “Domestic Manners of the Americans”, p.225, Oxford University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To me, Venice and Ocean Park were gaiety. I had not been allowed to go to those things as a youngster.

  Marion Davies

  Ocean, Parks, Youngsters

  7 Copy quote

• On December 12, 1829, Paganini wrote his friend Germi: "The variations I've composed on the graceful Neapolitan ditty, 'Oh Mamma, Mama Cara,' outshine everything. I can't describe it!" He was writing from Karlsruhe, in the midst of his triumphal tour through Germany. That letter marks the earliest known mention of the variations that would become famous as "The Carnival of Venice." At the time of his letter, Paganini had already performed the piece in at least four concerts. From then on, it would be one of his most popular compositions.

  Niccolo Paganini

  Friendship, Writing, Germany

  37 Copy quote

• Gentrification and consumerism... have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen.

  Tom Hayden

  Beach, Character, Aspens

  27 Copy quote