the olive doesn't fall far from the tree

This holiday has been restorative, rejuvenating, and restful. So much so, that I was able to read an entire book and I still have two days of vacation left. (I have another book...I am finally giving in and starting the Twlight series.)

I just finished reading The Reluctant Tuscan: How I discovered My Inner Italian. Below are some of my favorite quotes:


"...it reverberated with the chaos of people shouting, whistling, swearing, and singing. Clumps of teenagers joked and jostled each other as mothers called out to their children from second-story windows. Groups of men in shirtsleeves, all talking at once, debated the key issues of the day at such volume that the veins in their necks stuck out."

"Unlike the French, who tend to sink into reverential silence when the food arrives, the act of eating merely increases the Italian need for volume and drama."

"Invariably, we'd discover that whatever they wanted to discuss could have been dealt with over the phone. But that's not the Italian way. They need to see your face, look in your eyes, and use their vast array of hand gestures. So dependent are they on hand gestures that an Italian with a missing finger is thought to have a speech impediment."

"We're Italian. We live with a million laws and no rules."

"I have no trouble lying to the Italians, because they're a highly imaginative people who have an ethereal relationship with the truth. They are a nation of natural-born-storytellers who love to wrap you up in their yarns. Interestingly, they tend to label such a narrative as "una storia," which implies that what they are telling you can be true, made up, or a combination of the two. Often these anecdotes are long and quite intricate, carefully crafted to elicit your sympathies, or, failing that, exhaust you so you'll go away."

"I knew I'd never get to sleep now and I didn't know what to do with myself. I was too agitated to read and I had lost my appetite. I thought about going back to bed...or I could just do what I normally do at four o'clock in the morning: stand in front of the refrigerator with an eating utensil and sample things---an activity I like to refer to as "sport forking."

"I was connecting with my inner Italian, that deeply buried part of each of us that craves to savor life to its fullest."

"It is also relevant to consider how the Italians define the concept of soon. Long before Einstein, the Italians proved not only that time was curved, but in the right hands it could be bent into more shapes than elbow macaroni."

"...in Italy nobody ever uses the address of anything, so when you ask for directions you get something like 'Turn left at the house with the three gray cats until you come to the cafe' with the ugly waitress.'"

"The two Italian words most firmly embedded in the English language are graffiti and paparazzi. Interestingly, both involve a public display. This tells us much about their national psyche, for the average Italian is motivated by two powerful forces: fare una bella figura (looking good to his friends and neighbors) and non fare una brutta figura (not looking bad to his friends and neighbors)."

"As far as the terms 'virgin' and 'extra virgin' go, there are strict definitions based on things like acidity levels and organoleptic properties, which gets pretty complicated...Incidentally I have no idea why they use such religious and sexually loaded words to describe what is essentially cooking oil and salad dressing, other than to remind you that we're dealing with a people who are obsessed to the point of dementia about whatever they put in their mouths."