If a man is intelligent and Fascist, he is not honest. If he is honest and Fascist, he is not intelligent.

There were always stupendous (and jealously guarded) beauties in Italy, Sienese Madonnas or Botticelli Venuses who were greeted with hushed silence and by the turning of men's heads when they walked down a busy street.

The air is in fact filled with so much noise that one must usually talk in a very loud voice to be understood, thereby increasing the total uproar. Lovers sometimes have to whisper "I love you" to each other in the tones of newsboys selling the afternoon paper.

I think I was lucky to be exposed to American life when both the United States and I were young and full of stupendous illusions.

Americans (as seen from a distance) were known to get things done, ruthlessly, meticulously, quickly, against all obstacles.

In those years the adjective "American," added to any noun, indicated something naturally excellent, a drastic improved version of a dreary Old World article, or a diabolically new invention.

Many Americans preferred to live in a consoling world of their own creation, just as many of them preferred the synthetic, the make-believe, the man-made products, to those of God, in other words the imitation chemical vanilla.

She was as unmistakably American as the pink two-cent Washington postage stamp, as the Stars and Stripes, definitely more American in my eyes than the frizzy-haired big-bosomed dolls who won the title of Miss America each year at Atlantic City

The Italian way of life cannot be considered a success except by temporary visitors. It solves no problems. It makes them worse.

Winning wars, after all, is the ultimate test not of the quality of single men but of their capacity to work together and accept common sacrifices.