italians

Everything you need to know to enjoy your trip to Italy is in my Conversational Italian for Travelers books!

In Paris, choosing a dress is a monumental decision. In Milan, it__ a kick.

Italians make you laugh and break your heart.

Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say - no detail spared in the quest for perfection.

Today someone asked me if that old stereotype about hot-headed Italians is true. I answered this way: About 2,000 years ago, there was a guy running around hollering about peace & love ... and we nailed his ass to a cross! (Hope that answers your fuckin' question!)

They were our enemies. Yet in those young men of Italy I'd seen something centuries old. An American is only as old as his years. A long line of something was hidden behind the bright eyes of those Italians. And then and there I decided to learn something of the modern world. There was something abroad which we Americans couldn't or wouldn't understand. But unless we made some attempt to realize that everyone in the world isn't American, and that not everything American is good, we'll all perish together, and in this twentieth century....

For the multiculturalist, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance.

Three Italians sitting around a kitchen table without food or drink is a sure sign of trouble.