Drawing Conclusions Quotes

“That people invent stories, and then after a time there’s no telling what’s true and what isn’t.”
― Donna Leon, Drawing Conclusions

“How life plays tricks with us, he thought, as he folded the napkins and set them beside the plates. When Raffi was just starting to sit at the table and eat with them, dropping as much on the table or the floor as he got into his mouth, sipping and spilling and never quite sure what to do with his fork, Brunetti had viewed his behaviour not as charming, but as a continual distraction from his own meal. Yet here he was, years later, hoping that boy – now fully competent in the use of his fork – would find the time to eat with them and not take himself off to a friend’s house. It had nothing whatsoever to do with his son’s conversation, nor his wit nor his grasp of ideas, Brunetti realized. It simply filled Brunetti’s heart to have them there and to be able to see and hear them, knowing they were safe and warm and well”
― Donna Leon, Drawing Conclusions

“During the golden age of the Most Serene Republic, the Doge used to perform an elaborate yearly ceremony, tossing a gold ring into the waters of the Grand Canal to solemnize the wedding of the city to the waters that gave it life, wealth, and power.”
― Donna Leon, Drawing Conclusions

“She reminds me a bit of those women in nineteenth-century novels, interested in the moral improvement of their inferiors,’ she said.”
― Donna Leon, Drawing Conclusions

“You know how it is. After a time, something that’s happened, even if it isn’t very nice, if you just don’t talk about it, it sort of goes away. Not that you forget about it, not really, but it isn’t there any more.’ Brunetti recognized the familiarity of this, and Vianello said, ‘It’s the only way life can go on, really, if you think about it.”
― Donna Leon, Drawing Conclusions

“Well, there’d be no determining breed with this one: he was as much Bergamasco as Labrador, as much spaniel as hound. He was happy, that was evident, and perhaps that’s all a dog needed to be and all Brunetti needed to know about a dog. The arrival of the vaporetto cut off his reflections but did not remove Morandi from his mind. ‘People don’t change.’ How many times had he heard his mother say that? She had never studied psychology, his mother. In fact, she had never studied much at all, but that did not prevent her from having a logical mind, even a subtle one. Presented with an example of uncharacteristic behaviour, she would often point out that it was merely a manifestation of the person’s real character, and when she reminded people of events from the past, she was often proven right. Usually people surprised us, he reflected, with the bad they did, when some dark impulse slipped the leash”
― Donna Leon, Drawing Conclusions

“even the worst men wanted to be perceived as better than they were. How else could hypocrisy have risen to such delirious levels?”
― Donna Leon, Drawing Conclusions

“come face to face with this reminder of what we all know and feel uncomfortable knowing: that life plugs along, no matter what happens to any of us. It puts one foot in front of the other, whistling a tune that is dreary or merry by turn, but it always puts one foot in front of the other and moves on.”
― Donna Leon, Drawing Conclusions

“the discovery of speed.”
― Donna Leon, Drawing Conclusions