Donna Leon Quotes

Donna Leon

Donna Leon is the American author of a series of crime novels set in Venice, Italy, featuring the fictional hero Commissario Guido Brunetti. (Donna Leon Quotes)

“A great comfort faith can be to those left behind.”
Donna Leon
The Girl of His Dreams

“A line from Donizetti’s Anna Bolena flashed through his memory—‘If those who judge me are those who have already condemned me, I have no chance.”
Donna Leon
Fatal Remedies

“A man in whom violence boiled below the surface in much the same way that fresh-poured polenta waited for the chance to burn the mouth of anyone who tried to eat it.”
Donna Leon
A Venetian Reckoning

“A man in whom violence boiled below the surface in much the same way that fresh-poured polenta waited for the chance to burn the mouth of anyone who tried to eat it.”
Donna Leon
Death and Judgment

“A man without a sense of fashion is a man without a soul.”
Donna Leon
A Question of Belief

“A wife is her husband’s richest treasure, a helpmeet, a steadying column. A vineyard with no hedge will be overrun; a man with no wife becomes a helpless wanderer,” he quoted.”
Donna Leon
Quietly in Their Sleep

“A woman whom the course of years had turned sour and to whom the vows meant poverty of spirit, chastity of humour, and obedience only to some rigorous concept of duty.”
Donna Leon
Quietly in Their Sleep

“Again, she put her face in her hands and wiped away the years, then let them return and looked at him.”
Donna Leon
The Temptation of Forgiveness

“And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.”
Donna Leon
Death in a Strange Country

“And so it went, the detritus of life ordered and sealed in boxes and nothing to be discarded if it might sometime be used or needed again.”
Donna Leon
A Question of Belief

“And today, to the best of his knowledge, no one spoke against it, either, but today the silence was based on the belief that slavery had ceased to exist.”
Donna Leon
Death and Judgment

“And will knowing what she reads make you know who she is?” “Can you think of a better way to tell?”
Donna Leon
Quietly in Their Sleep

“Another bridge, then open water on one side. On the other was the Basilica and the Palazzo, and Brunetti had the sudden realization that, though none of this belonged to him, he belonged to all of it.”
Donna Leon
Earthly Remains

“Aren’t you ashamed that you pay all of your attention to acquiring as much money as you can, without giving any thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?”
Donna Leon
Wilful Behaviour

“As a musician, he was as close to perfection as a man could come. It was worth putting up with the man to be able to work with the musician.”
Donna Leon
Death at La Fenice

“As he started down towards his office, Brunetti thought about how taking a look at one’s unconscious motives and prejudices was like walking barefoot through cloudy water: you never knew whether you were going to step on something disgusting or bang your toe into a rock.”
Donna Leon
Unto Us a Son Is Given

“As if sensing his attention, Paola turned her head towards him and allowed her eyes to close and then open slowly, as though she’d been told that the Crucifixion had only just begun and there still remained a number of nails.”
Donna Leon
The Waters of Eternal Youth

“Beauty was where you found it, and it was always comforting to see.”
Donna Leon
The Temptation of Forgiveness

“Both of them had always taken delight in this most wonderful of holdovers from the academic Stone Age, the fact that the rector of the university was addressed as Il Magnifico Rettore, the only thing Brunetti had learned in twenty years on the fringes of the university that had managed to make academic life sound interesting to him.”
Donna Leon
A Venetian Reckoning

“Brunetti finally accepted the appalling thought: a dying woman put out on the street because she couldn’t pay for the hospital. Where were they, for God’s sake, America?” (Donna Leon Quotes)
Donna Leon
The Waters of Eternal Youth

“Brunetti had once come across the term ‘compassion fatigue’, but thought that the oh-so-clever press had got it wrong, and the term should really be, ‘horror fatigue’.”
Donna Leon
Blood from a Stone

“Brunetti had recently read a book that said a goshawk could see the veins in the wings of a butterfly: who knew what could be seen? Or felt. Possibility was limitless, each of us a separate universe of choice and capacity.”
Donna Leon
Earthly Remains

“Brunetti remembered when they found themselves with an excessive catch, they chose to give it away, rather than watch it rot.”
Donna Leon
Earthly Remains

“Come face to face with this reminder of what we all know and feel uncomfortable knowing: that life plugs along, no matter what happens to any of us. It puts one foot in front of the other, whistling a tune that is dreary or merry by turn, but it always puts one foot in front of the other and moves on.”
Donna Leon
Drawing Conclusions

“Don’t you have any desire for vengeance?” he asked before he remembered that she wasn’t Italian.”
Donna Leon
Death at La Fenice

“Even the worst men wanted to be perceived as better than they were. How else could hypocrisy have risen to such delirious levels?”
Donna Leon
Drawing Conclusions

“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
Death at La Fenice

“He dealt every day with people who believed they weren’t happy and who further believed that by committing some crime—theft, murder, deceit, blackmail, even kidnapping—they would find the magic elixir that would transform the perceived misery of their lives into that most desired of states: happiness.”
Donna Leon
A Noble Radiance

“He had learned over the years that most professional and social situations were pretty much like water on uneven ground: sooner or later, they would work themselves level. People, over time, generally decided who was the Alpha and who the Beta. Higher rank sometimes helped with the determination, but not always.”
Donna Leon
About Face

“He heard footsteps coming from the kitchen and turned to see his wife approaching. In that instant he wanted to take some sort of emotional photograph so that he could, sometime in the future when things were different, pull it out of his memory and look at it and say, ‘I’ve lived a happy life’.”
Donna Leon
Unto Us a Son Is Given

“He hesitated then, anticipating the panic that came when there was nothing left to read”
Donna Leon
Earthly Remains

“He remembered enough of his study of logic to recognize a slippery slope when he saw it, even in his own thinking, but still it felt right to suspect that Chiara’s failure to give sympathy might somehow lead to a refusal to give aid.”
Donna Leon
Blood from a Stone

“He smiled at the brilliance of his perception, and Brunetti, too, smiled, delighted to hear it.”
Donna Leon
Death at La Fenice

“Her glance put him on the scales and weighed him, and then she said, ‘Less trouble accepting reality, I think.”
Donna Leon
Through a Glass, Darkly

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

“How beautiful, the grace of women; how soft their charity.”
Donna Leon
Dressed for Death

“I guess God can be whatever God wants to be. Maybe God’s so great that even our little rules about material reality and our tiny little universe don’t mean anything to God. You ever think of that?”
Donna Leon
Quietly in Their Sleep

“I know you’re tired of hearing me say this, Guido, but I think plastic bottles are wrong, even though they’re certainly not criminal. Though,” she quickly added, “I think they will be within a few years. If we have any sense, that is.”
Donna Leon
Death and Judgment

“I raised my hand and asked if God was a spirit. And he said yes, He was. So I asked if it was right that a spirit was different from a person because it didn’t have a body, wasn’t material. And when he agreed, I asked how, if God was a spirit, He could be a man, if He didn’t have a body or anything.”
Donna Leon
Quietly in Their Sleep

“I remember that’s the way he was before we came out here. But then it was as if we’d come to a magic country where people changed into the person you wanted them to be, and all of a sudden my father became quiet and patient and had time to read to me.”
Donna Leon
Earthly Remains

“I think people prefer to remember happy times, well, happier times, and if they can’t remember them, then to change the memories and make them happier.”
Donna Leon
A Sea of Troubles

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

“If anything, the spirit that drove him now was fiercer, but there was no denying the diminishing powers of his body.”
Donna Leon
Death and Judgment

“In any other city in Italy, the fact that no one had seen or heard anything would be no more than an indication of their distrust of the police and a general unwillingness to help them. Here, however, where the people were generally law-abiding and most of the police themselves Venetians, it meant no more than that they had seen or heard nothing.”
Donna Leon
Death in a Strange Country

“It would be nice if we could choose the people we love, but love chooses them.”
Donna Leon
Unto Us a Son Is Given

“Italian to the core, he did not for an instant doubt that a man could be passionately devoted to the wife he betrayed with other women.”
Donna Leon
A Noble Radiance

“It’s the Lord who is kind, Dottore. We merely do His service.”
Donna Leon
Dressed for Death

“I’ve been thinking that of late – she said. – Thinking what? – That the world of Henry James is becoming very small for me.”
Donna Leon
A Question of Belief

“Lampedusa had it right—things had to seem to change so that things could remain the same.”
Donna Leon
A Venetian Reckoning

“Lampedusa had it right—things had to seem to change so that things could remain the same.”
Donna Leon
Death and Judgment

“Life had taught him to be profoundly suspicious of coincidence, and it had similarly taught him to view any seemingly random conjunction of events or persons as coincidence and thus be suspicious of that, as well.” (Donna Leon Quotes)
Donna Leon
A Sea of Troubles

“Most people, however much they might deny it — had an idea of what they were getting into when they got into it.”
Donna Leon
About Face

“Mother-in-law still demanded obedience and reverence while never behaving in a manner that would merit either. This alien presence, imposed upon a person’s life by sheerest chance, made ever-increasing demands in return for the vain promise of domestic harmony. Resistance was futile, for opposition inevitably led to”
Donna Leon
A Sea of Troubles

“Once, walking with him, Paola had stopped and asked him what he was thinking about, and the fact that she was the only person in the world he would not be embarrassed to tell just what it was he had been thinking about at that moment convinced him, though a thousand things had already done so, that this was the woman he wanted to marry, had to marry, would marry.”
Donna Leon
Dressed for Death

“Patta would have fallen upon these details as a beast upon prey and torn into them in an attempt to find nourishment.”
Donna Leon
Unto Us a Son Is Given

“Patta’s expression seemed cordial enough, though from past experience Brunetti knew this was meaningless: vipers liked to bask on rocks in the sunshine, did they not?”
Donna Leon
The Girl of His Dreams

“Perception of personal danger very often set people on the path of virtue.”
Donna Leon
About Face

“She believed that books served as a mirror of the person who accumulated them.”
Donna Leon
Through a Glass, Darkly

“She had answered his questions. Whether he now had the truth was another issue entirely, one he chose not to deal with them.”
Donna Leon
Death at La Fenice

“She lengthened her stride, aware at every step of how long she’d been sitting at a desk and how much her body rejoiced in this simple act of walking on the beach in the sun.”
Donna Leon
A Sea of Troubles

“She reminds me a bit of those women in nineteenth-century novels, interested in the moral improvement of their inferiors,’ she said.”
Donna Leon
Drawing Conclusions

“Then we must consider what an African would want to do with the money to.”
Donna Leon
Blood from a Stone

“There was no vanity here, only the calm acceptance of her own worth and of her own talent, and he knew enough about her past to realize how hard that must have been to achieve.”
Donna Leon
Acqua Alta

“They hadn’t lived long enough to understand what grace it was to die in an instant and not to linger.”
Donna Leon
Unto Us a Son Is Given

“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
Death at La Fenice

“Though he did not believe, he was not untouched by the magic of belief.”
Donna Leon
Death and Judgment

“Though he had repeatedly asked her not to do this, she insisted on choosing a subject at the beginning of any investigation he worked on, and she was generally wrong, for she always opted for the most obvious choice.” (Donna Leon Quotes)
Donna Leon
Death at La Fenice

“We are a nation of egoists. It is our glory, but it will be our destruction, for none of us can be made to concern ourselves about something as abstract as “the common good”. The best of us can rise to feeling concern for our families, but as a nation we are incapable of more.”
Donna Leon
Death in a Strange Country

“We are a nation of egoists. It is our glory, but it will be our destruction, for none of us can be made to concern ourselves about something as abstract as “the common good.”
Donna Leon
Death in a Strange Country

“We choose to love people despite their flaws and weaknesses. We train ourselves to overlook or ignore them; sometimes these failures of character even fill us with a special kind of tenderness that has nothing whatsoever in it of a sense of superiority. Like bombs, these flaws tick quietly through our lives, and theirs, until we learn to ignore them, and then forget them. Until some unlikely impossibility causes them to explode, when finally we recognize how dangerous these people are and have been all along.”
Donna Leon
Unto Us a Son Is Given

“We never know them well. Do we?”
“Who?”
“Real people.”
“What do you mean, real people?”
“As opposed to people in books,” Paola explained. “They’re the only ones we ever know well. Or know truly.”
Donna Leon
A Sea of Troubles

“We train ourselves to overlook or ignore them; sometimes these failures of character even fill us with a special kind of tenderness that has nothing whatsoever in it of a sense of superiority.”
Donna Leon
Unto Us a Son Is Given

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

“When you’re in pain, you need to think of something so that at least part of you can be free of the pain, so that your mind can go somewhere where there’s no pain.”
Donna Leon
Earthly Remains

“Why are other people’s prejudices so strange, while our own are so thought-out and reasonable?”
Donna Leon
The Waters of Eternal Youth

“Why bother to put the boy who broke into a house in jail when the man who stole billions from the health system is named ambassador to the country to which he had been sending the money for years?”
Donna Leon
A Venetian Reckoning

“Why bother to put the boy who broke into a house in jail when the man who stole billions from the health system is named ambassador to the country to which he had been sending the money for years?”
Donna Leon
Death and Judgment

“Wife is her husband’s richest treasure, a helpmeet, a steadying column. A vineyard with no hedge will be overrun; a man with no wife becomes a helpless wanderer.”
Donna Leon
Quietly in Their Sleep

“You know how it is. After a time, something that’s happened, even if it isn’t very nice, if you just don’t talk about it, it sort of goes away. Not that you forget about it, not really, but it isn’t there any more.’ Brunetti recognized the familiarity of this, and Vianello said, ‘It’s the only way life can go on, really, if you think about it.”
Donna Leon
Drawing Conclusions

“You really love to gossip, don’t you?” he asked, wishing she had brought him a glass of wine. “Yes, I suppose I do,” she answered, sounding surprised at the realization. “You think that’s why I love reading novels so much?”
Donna Leon
Suffer the Little Children