Montalbano and Valente seemed not to have heard him, looking as if their minds were elsewhere. But in fact they were paying very close attention, like cats that, keeping their eyes closed as if asleep, are actually counting the stars. — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share Image
“rosticceria . . . cuddriruni . . . arancini supplì: A rosticceria is a take-out restaurant serving mostly roast meats; cuddriruni is a Sicilian sort of focaccia, served with a broad variety of toppings; and arancini are Sicilian fried rice balls usually with mozzarella, peas, and a ragù sauce inside, while supplì are Roman rice balls, also with mozzarella and tomato sauce inside. Arancini are round… — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share
“They ate in religious silence, the corners of their mouths smeared with ricotta cream. Which, the rules say, must be removed with a slow,… — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share Image
“In grammar school he’d had an old priest as his religion teacher. “Truth is light,” the priest had said one day. Montalbano, never very… — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share Image
Wearing glasses for reading meant surrendering to old age without the least bit of a fight. — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share Image
“It meant that, today, to enter any place whatsoever – an airport, a bank, a jeweller’s or watchmaker’s shop – you had to submit to a specific ceremony of control. Why ceremony? Because it served no concrete purpose. A thief, a hijacker, a terrorist, if they really want to enter, will find a way. The ceremony doesn’t even serve to… — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share
“To distract himself, he formulated a proposition. A philosophical proposition? Maybe, but tending towards "weak thought"--exhausted thought, in fact. He even gave this proposition a title: "The Civilization of Today and the Ceremony of Access." What did it mean? It meant that, today, to enter any place whatsoever--an airport, a bank, a jeweler's or watchmaker's shop--you had to submit to… — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share
“From the pit of his stomach a violent spasm of nausea rose up and seized his throat. He ran to the bathroom, barely able to stand, knelt down in front of the toilet and started to vomit. He vomited the whiskey he'd just drunk, vomited what he'd eaten that day as well as what he'd eaten the day before, and… — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share
“Giulio was against our meeting. He didn't want me getting mixed up in things that, in his opinion, were no concern of mine. For decades the respectable people here did nothing but repeat that the Mafia was no concern of theirs but only involved the people involved in it. But I used to teach my pupils that the see-nothing, know-nothing… — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share
The memory of the aged becomes clearer and clearer with time. It has no pity. — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share Image
“And in our dark days, with so many threatening clouds on the horizon, he concluded, we puff up a story like this to drug people, to distract their attention from the serious problems and divert them with a Romeo-and-Juliet story, one scripted, however, by a soap opera writer.” — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share
But then why, when talking on the phone, did they quarrel, on average at least once every four sentences? Maybe, though the inspector, it was an effect of the distance between them becoming less and less tolerable with each passing day, since as we grow old - for every now and then one must, yes, look reality in the eye… — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share
Montalbano felt moved. This was real friendship, Sicilian friendship, the kind based on intuition, on what was left unsaid. With a true friend, one… — Andrea Camilleri Copy Share Image
