Italy is full of historical buildings. And Europe holds a great history of philosophy from Greece until today. I read all those books and see these buildings, and I think of where I stand when I design my architecture. ↗
Gladio had been necessary during the days of the Cold War but, in view of the collapse of the East Block, Italy would suggest to Nato that the organisation was no longer necessary. ↗
As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible. ↗
In Holland and Spain and France, where so many of us come from, people aren't interested in the sex lives of their players. We don't hear these stories - even in Italy where the media is right on top of football. ↗
I have been going to Italy since 1980, but I always went to do work. I did not live overseas, because I do not like running around with everything I own in a paper bag. ↗
But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo. ↗
In Italy, on the breaking up of the Roman Empire, society might be said to be resolved into its original elements, - into hostile atoms, whose only movement was that of mutual repulsion. ↗
