Author of quotes: Katherine Banner

While she was wondering what to answer, Andrea took her palm and placed a flower in it. It reminded her of how the poet Mario Vazzo placed a fragile flower in the palm of her mother Pina Vella. As a child, she did not understand the meaning of this gesture. Now I understand.

“They all think that we haven’t changed, those damn parents of ours,” said Flavio. - Their world is an island, fishing boats, village gossip and the damned Festival of St. Agatha...

Robert, looking at her flushed cheeks, believed that his voice had betrayed him, and switched to a more even tone, but continued to confess his love. He was not going to stop, because for him to stop confessing his love to her was akin to stopping loving her.

Then, alarmed by unconfirmed rumors that the Inglesi would take away medals, war photographs and notices of the death of their husbands and sons in the war, people flocked to their gardens and fields to bury these relics. And even Amedeo one night took Flavio’s medal, wrapped it in a piece of leather and hid it under a palm tree in the yard.

Sitting on the steps of the terrace, she reflected bitterly that she was still completely alone on this island. And what will always be different from the rest: she is a girl to pray for, not to love. But Maria Grazia, like the rest of the island's inhabitants, did not notice the obvious: she was beautiful.

Only in subsequent years did Amedeo realize that the problem of a smart child is that while observing and understanding what is happening, he does not want to close his eyes to what he sees - just like Pina. Like Pina, Maria-Gracia could not be forced to look and not see.

He attached it to the inside of his cap to protect it from dirt. And dirt was everywhere, and if there was no dirt, then there was ice, when there was no ice, there was water, if not water, then gas and fog. It was a world of elements, here people were falling apart, people were foaming, people were screaming.

“He was still in the primitive state in which he was born: no wife, no friend, not counting his adoptive father, no heirs.”

Returning home on a cloudy morning to his next temporary home, he washed his hands, poured himself coffee, opened the windows towards the cheerful hubbub of people and began to copy out stories in his little red book. He did this no matter what fate befell his patient, and always solemnly. In this sense, his book became a collection of celebrations of a thousand other lives.

What a huge difference it is to be a father or just a lover.

War is an insatiable huge monster that swallowed up cities, islands, people and gave away only one thing - an Englishman who came from the sea as a blessing. The war was the end, but it was also the beginning.

And his personal guiding light was the promise he made to himself to survive this war and return home to Castellammare. By the end of the war, Castellammare was the only place he believed in. Everything else was swallowed up by the suffocating haze of war.