Death at La Fenice Quotes

“His clothing marked him as Italian. The cadence of his speech announced that he was Venetian. His eyes were all policeman.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Why was it that, when children loved you, you knew everything, and when they were angry with you, you knew nothing?

Commissario Guido Brunetti”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“For reasons he had never understood, she read a different newspaper each morning, spanning the political spectrum from right to left, and languages from French to English. Years ago, when he had first met her and understood her even less, he had asked about this. Her response, he came to realize only years later, made perfect sense: ‘I want to see how many different ways the same lies can be told.’ Nothing he had read in the ensuing years had come close to suggesting that her approach was wrong.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Though everyone in the bar knew who he was, no one asked him about the death, though one old man did rustle his newspaper suggestively.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Let me try to explain it this way. During a performance, it is the conductor who keeps things together, sees that the singers maintain the right tempi, that the orchestra supports them, that the entrances are on time, that neither is allowed to get away from the other. And he must also see that the orchestra’s playing doesn’t get too loud, that the crescendi build and are dramatic but, at the same time, don’t drown out the singers. When a conductor hears this happening, he can quiet them with a flick of his hand or a finger to the mouth.’ To illustrate, the musician demonstrated the gestures that Brunetti had seen performed during many concerts and operas.

‘And he must, at every moment, be in charge of everything: chorus, singers, orchestra, keeping them in balance perfectly. If he doesn’t do this, then the whole thing falls apart, and all anyone hears is the separate parts, not the whole opera as a unit.”
― donna leon, Death at La Fenice

“Even if exile is spent in the most beautiful city in the world, Brunetti realized, it is still exile.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“That first time, we talked about the servant, who had influenza, but when I came back, we somehow started to talk about Greek poetry. And that led to a discussion, if I remember correctly, of Greek and Roman historians. The count is particularly fond of Thucydides. Since I’d gone to the classical liceo, I could talk about them without making a fool of myself, so the count decided I must be a competent doctor. Now he comes to my office every so often, and we talk about Thucydides and Strabo.’ She leaned back against the wall and crossed her ankles in front of her. ‘He’s very much like my other patients. Most of them come to talk about ailments they don’t have and pain they don’t feel. The count is more interesting to talk to, but I suppose there’s really not much difference between them. He’s lonely and old, just like them, and he needs someone to talk to.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Don't you have any desire for vengeance?" he asked before he remembered that she wasn't Italian.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“was”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“I don’t know how familiar you are with the Venetian audience, but the most complimentary thing that can be said of them is that they are dogs. They don’t go to the theatre to listen to music or hear beautiful singing; they go to wear their new clothes and be seen in them by their friends, and those friends are there for the same reasons.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“he and the count seemed to work among the same people, he at least had the consolation of being able to arrest them, whereas the count was constrained to invite them to dinner.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Not for the first time in his career, Brunetti reflected upon the possible advantage of censorship of the press.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Why was it that the words with which we confronted death always sounded so inadequate, so blatantly false?”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“The man looked to be about the same age as Paola, though he clearly had a harder time getting there...His nose was flat, as though it had once been broken, and his eyes were sad, as though his heart had been. He looked like a stevedore who wrote poetry.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Though he had repeatedly asked her not to do this, she insisted on choosing a subject at the beginning of any investigation he worked on, and she was generally wrong, for she always opted for the most obvious choice.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“As a musician, he was as close to perfection as a man could come. It was worth putting up with the man to be able to work with the musician.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“She had answered his questions. Whether he now had the truth was another issue entirely, one he chose not to deal with then.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“He hesitated, himself offended by the next question he had to put to her. He told himself that he was like a priest, a doctor, and that what people told him went no further, but he knew that wasn’t true, knew that he would respect no confidence if it would lead him to find the person he was looking for.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Fragolino,”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“He smiled at the brilliance of his perception, and Brunetti, too, smiled, delighted to hear it.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“His clothing marked him as Italian. The cadence of his speech announced that he was Venetian. His eyes were all policeman.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“His eyes were all policeman.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“And that, Brunetti realized, was beginning to interest him a great deal, for the answer to his death must lie there, as it always did. Santore”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Helmut thought himself above common morality. Or perhaps he thought he’d managed to create his own, different from ours, better.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“I’ve always liked it about the Greeks that they kept the violence off the stage.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“when children loved you, you knew everything, and when they were angry with you, you knew nothing?”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“Where does American money come from? Steel. Railways. You know how it is over there. It doesn’t matter if you murder or rob to get it. The trick is in keeping it for a hundred years, and then you’re aristocrats.’ ‘Is that so different from here?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Of course,’ Padovani explained, smiling. ‘Here we have to keep it five hundred years before we’re aristocrats. And there’s another difference. In Italy, you have to be well-dressed. In America, it’s difficult to tell which are the millionaires and which are the servants.”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice

“the warmth and smell he associated with”
― Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice