Natura morta Quotes

“A girl, hardly ten, holding a Barbie doll by its hair, bent over the edge of the fountain, sprinkled her face and forearms, and stared to the side for a moment as Piccoletto, who was also seated on the edge of the fountain, his legs outspread, chewing at his silver crucifix, pulled off his socks. The girl stared long into his leg holes at his balls hanging from his baggy yellow underwear and at the creased foreskin draped over the head of his large member.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta

“The long, damp eyelash hairs of his open left eye grazed his eyebrow, the long, blood-caked eyelash hairs of his closed right eye grazed his freckle-dotted cheek.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta

“Ein neapolitanischen Dialekt sprechendes Nonnenzwillingspaar leckte an den mit Schokolade bestrichenen Zehen eines Eises in Kinderfußform.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta

“The offal vendor folded a beef tongue, wrapped it in paper, passed it to a Chinese woman and wiped the sprinkles of blood from the price tag with a damp washcloth.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta

“A gypsy girl peeled a fresh green fig with her long and filthy red-lacquered fingernails.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta

“A little humpbacked man with a waxen face, his cadaverous skin covered in black blotches, crossed himself and kissed the black fingertips of his emaciated hand, while a group of nodding bishops dressed in red, wiping the sweat from their chins with kerchiefs embroidered with yellow mitres, walked past him through Saint Peter's Square. His eyelids and eyelashes were painted black with mascara, his eyes were yellowish and blood-spotted, his sparse hair was dyed black, his moustache flecked with gray. Wheezing, he pulled his mouth open and closed and grasped his throat with a hand covered in golden rings.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta

“With an air somewhat distraught, nostalgic, and sad, a Spanish teenager glanced at the face and bust of a Sicilian-speaking postulant selling holy paraphernalia, who shook hundreds of small statues of Christ out of numerous plastic bags, letting them fall crackling into a trunk, while his father, rooting around in the bowl, taking one tiny crucifix after another in his hands, stared at them appraisingly.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta

“   "Signori, buon giorno! Un chilo di salmone originale, soltanto dieci mila lire," called Piccoletto, and chewed at his fingernails, smelling of fish slime and fish blood & blackened with squid ink at the edges.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta

“A black-veiled nun, holding plastic bags full of cucumbers, apricots, and onions in one hand and pressing two tall blonde Barbie dolls wrapped in plastic to her breast with the other, stopped before the tomato vendor, whose vegetable knife hung from a lanyard around his neck, laid the dolls on a wooden crate, and asked for a few kilos of tomatoes on the vine.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta

“Another gypsy girl — two gold upper teeth shone in the void of her harelip — lifted her right breast slightly and placed her nipple in the mouth of her child, whose eyelids were sealed shut with pus.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta