The party delegate was one of those gloomy, tight-lipped persons who seem to have been made for wearing a red scarf round the neck and a tommy-gun sl… - Giovannino Guareschi

In the valley a bicycle is just as necessary as a pair of shoes, in fact more so. Because even if a man hasn’t any shoes he can still ride a bicycle, whereas if he hasn’t a bicycle he must surely travel on foot.

I was born near the Po and it is the only respectable river in all Italy. To be respectable, a river must flow through a plain because water was created to stay horizontal and only when it is perfectly horizontal does it preserve its natural dignity. Niagara falls is an embarrassing phenomenon, like a man who walks on his hands.

Those were the days when there was a great deal of argument about that piece of international machinery known as the ‘Atlantic Pact’, which may have owed its name to the fact that between words and deeds there lies the breadth of an ocean.