A Quote by Italo Calvino

...and every Wednesday the perfumed young lady slips me a hundred-crown note to leave her alone with the convict. And by Thursday the hundred crowns are already gone in so much beer. And when the visiting hour is over, the young lady comes out with the stink of jail in her elegant clothes; and the prisoner goes back to his cell with the lady's perfume in his jailbird's suit. And I'm left with the smell of beer. Life is nothing but trading smells.

Italo Calvino

Quote Topics

Alone Already Gone Back Beer Cell Clothes Convict Crown Crowns Elegant Every Goes Gone Her His Hour Hundred Jail Lady Leave Left Life Life Is Me Much Note Nothing Out Over Perfume Prisoner Slips Smell Smells Stink Suit Thursday Trading Visiting Wednesday Young Young Lady

Quote Author

Italo Calvino
Italian - Journalist
October 15, 1923 - September 19, 1985

It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week.

Susanna Clarke

I. At Tea THE kettle descants in a cosy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then in her guest's, and shows in her own Her sense that she fills an envied place; And the visiting lady is all abloom, And says there was never so sweet a room. And the happy young housewife does not know That the woman beside her was his first choice, Till the fates ordained it could not be so.... Betraying nothing in look or voice The guest sits smiling and sips her tea, And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

Thomas Hardy

Harcourt sent my book to Evelyn Waugh and his comment was: “If this is really the unaided work of a young lady, it is a remarkable product.” My mother was vastly insulted. She put the emphasis on if and lady. Does he suppose you’re not a lady? she says.

Flannery O'Connor

My sister is a very peculiar lady. When we were young, I wasn't allowed to talk to her friends. Now I'm not allowed to talk to her children, nor are they permitted to see me. This is the nature of the lady. Doesn't bother me at all.

Joan Fontaine

Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation.

Jane Austen

Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody’s business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady’s problems, you don’t go crying to her with yours—you can’t pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends. They don’t want to hear about it. And when Miss White Lady catches her man with the lady next door, you keep out of it, you hear me?

Kathryn Stockett

No young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.

Jane Austen

Every spring, this country will be reminded of the Lady from Texas. As trees bloom and flowers carpet our nation's capital, Lady Bird Johnson will be remembered. Only Lady Bird Johnson could, with her vision of a beautiful America, lay claim to spring as her memorial.

David Mixner

No sane person, I hope, would accuse me of saying that every Distributist must drink beer; especially if he could brew his own cider or found claret better for his health. But I do most emphatically scorn and scout the vulgar refinement that regards beer as something unseemly and humiliating. And I would shout the name of beer a hundred times a day, to shock all the snobs who have so shameful a sense of shame.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Snap. Lady with dog. Lady on sofa half-naked. Snap. Naked lady. Lady next to dresser. Lady at window. Snap. Lady on balcony sunlight. (On New Orleans photographer E. J. Bellocq)

Michael Ondaatje

Girls will probably - if she's a lady - never do the No. 2 around you. If they're not a lady, she might poo. You might ask her, 'What's that smell?' And she'll be like 'I don't know!' But it really might be her. Because it happens.

Omarion

I just talked to a young lady, a freshman at Santa Barbara. She's taking a course, and Moneyball's one of the required readings. This young lady could dream of one day becoming a general manager.

Billy Beane

Her iron will won international respect. Her unabashed femininity gained women's. Margaret Thatcher was a lady's lady.

Louise Burfitt-Dons

One old lady who wants her head lifted wouldn't be so bad, but you multiply her two hundred and fifty thousand times and what you get is a book club.

Flannery O'Connor

She only maintains that it is possible, under some circumstances, for a lady to murder her husband; but that a woman who wears ankle-strap shoes and smokes on the street corner, though she may be a joy to all who know her and have devoted her life to charity, could never qualify as a lady.