Quotes from Death at La Fenice

“His clothing marked him as Italian. The cadence of his speech announced that he was Venetian. His eyes were all policeman.”
― Donna Leon, quote from Death at La Fenice

“Though everyone in the bar knew who he was, no one asked him about the death, though one old man did rustle his newspaper suggestively.”
― Donna Leon, quote from Death at La Fenice

“For reasons he had never understood, she read a different newspaper each morning, spanning the political spectrum from right to left, and languages from French to English. Years ago, when he had first met her and understood her even less, he had asked about this. Her response, he came to realize only years later, made perfect sense: ‘I want to see how many different ways the same lies can be told.’ Nothing he had read in the ensuing years had come close to suggesting that her approach was wrong.”
― Donna Leon, quote from Death at La Fenice

“Where does American money come from? Steel. Railways. You know how it is over there. It doesn’t matter if you murder or rob to get it. The trick is in keeping it for a hundred years, and then you’re aristocrats.’ ‘Is that so different from here?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Of course,’ Padovani explained, smiling. ‘Here we have to keep it five hundred years before we’re aristocrats. And there’s another difference. In Italy, you have to be well-dressed. In America, it’s difficult to tell which are the millionaires and which are the servants.”
― Donna Leon, quote from Death at La Fenice

“I’ve always liked it about the Greeks that they kept the violence off the stage.”
― Donna Leon, quote from Death at La Fenice

“Helmut thought himself above common morality. Or perhaps he thought he’d managed to create his own, different from ours, better.”
― Donna Leon, quote from Death at La Fenice

“And that, Brunetti realized, was beginning to interest him a great deal, for the answer to his death must lie there, as it always did. Santore”
― Donna Leon, quote from Death at La Fenice

“when children loved you, you knew everything, and when they were angry with you, you knew nothing?”
― Donna Leon, quote from Death at La Fenice

“the warmth and smell he associated with”
― Donna Leon, quote from Death at La Fenice

“His clothing marked him as Italian. The cadence of his speech announced that he was Venetian. His eyes were all policeman.”
― Donna Leon, quote from Death at La Fenice

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.