Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Fabrizio De André

114 quotes

“Benedetto Croce said that everyone writes poetry until the age of eighteen. From the age of eighteen onwards, two categories of people continue to write poetry: poets and idiots. So, as a precaution, I would prefer to consider myself a singer-songwriter.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are those who are touched by faith and those who merely cultivate the virtue of hope [...], the God in whom, despite everything, I continue to hope, is an entity above the parties, above the factions.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do they complain about gypsies? Look at them going around begging for votes: but they don't go on foot, they have buses that look like spaceships, trains, aeroplanes: and look at them when they stop for lunch or dinner: they know how to eat with a knife and fork, and with a knife and fork they will eat your savings. Italy belongs to a hundred men, but are we sure that these hundred men belong to Italy?”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Singing alone with my guitar would give me the same feeling as getting down on all fours in the De Ferrari fountain at midday.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Genoa is also the friends who live far away and watch you grow up and grow old, for example the pescuèi who, just like in Il pescatore, have faces furrowed with wrinkles that look like smiles, and whatever you confide in them, they already know from the sea.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“During the war, I was displaced to Piedmont, and for me, Genoa was a myth, something extraordinary. When I saw it for the first time at the age of five, I immediately fell in love with it, tremendously, and at the first match of my life, Genoa-Sampierdarenese, I immediately married the team that bore the name of my city. It was a love that I never betrayed, the most solid of my life, which was full of constant contradictions.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After ten years of slapping each other, you either become friends or you kill each other.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I tried in every way to be a man. I could have expressed myself, for example, through flower cultivation if I had lived in Albenga, or through cattle breeding if they hadn't secretly sold me a farm that my parents owned in 1954. I happened to become a singer-songwriter. Becoming an artist, in a way, prevents you from becoming a man in the normal way. So I believe that at a certain point in your life, you have to make up for the time you lost being an artist in order to try to become a man.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For me, Genoa is like a mother, it's where I learned to live.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What struck me about the world of the carruggi was the habit of suffering and therefore solidarity. They were supportive on any occasion, because they were the underclass, not even a specific class that could be grasped by the traditional political parties. It was a world that defended itself to some extent from the state, and so I wallowed in it. I already had precise political ideas, derived from Brassens, whom I listened to from morning to night, thanks to the records my father brought me from France, and he described this world, these marginalised characters that I then found in Genoa.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I think is useful is to have the government as close to me as possible and the state, if it really can't be avoided, as far away from my balls as possible.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our world is divided into winners and losers, where the former number three and the latter three billion. How can we be optimistic?”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sang imitating Modugno, and besides, how could one not be influenced by him?”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Genoa is a democratic and liberal city. It is tolerant because it has always done business with everyone regardless of language, customs, clothing or skin colour.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Genoa [...] has always been this way [multiracial] since the Middle Ages. I would say like Sarajevo. Five centuries ago, no one paid any attention if someone wore a turban. Genoa was born and grew up respecting different religions. There has never been a ghetto. The Church had little power, and neither did the Inquisition. There was never a torture chamber in the Doge's Palace. I don't think it was so much an Enlightenment vocation as the need to open up to everyone for commercial interests. Are the carugi full of Moroccans? This is nothing new for Genoa.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've never seen a musician communicate with the audience like Luciano does.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a miraculous voice had not performed La canzone di Marinella in 1967, I would most likely have finished my law studies and become a solicitor. I thank Mina for stacking the deck in my favour and, above all, to the benefit of my virtual clients.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jesus of Nazareth [...] in my opinion, was and remains the greatest revolutionary of all time.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From a quality of life perspective, apart from the devastating spectacle of the suburban areas, life in Sardinia is perhaps the best a man could wish for: twenty-four thousand kilometres of forests, countryside and coastline surrounded by a miraculous sea should coincide with what I would recommend to the good Lord to give us as Paradise. In my opinion, the Sardinians would make better decisions if they were independent within a European and Mediterranean community.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For centuries, the people of Genoa have had a special relationship with French culture, both in music, as in the case of the chansonnier, and in cabinetmaking, with the Genoese Baroque style.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...] if I am classical high school, he (Francesco De Gregori) is university.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“During my kidnapping, my faith in people helped me, precisely where my faith in God was lacking. I have always said that God is a human invention, something utilitarian, a patch on our fragility... But, nevertheless, something changed during my kidnapping. It's not that I changed my mind, but it's certain that swearing today embarrasses me, to say the least.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You're not bad [Cristiano De André], you're just stupid!”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mannerini taught me that being intelligent doesn't mean accumulating knowledge, but rather selecting it once it has been accumulated, trying to separate the useful from the useless. [...] I practically learned this ability to analyse and observe from him. He also influenced me politically, reinforcing ideas I already had. He was certainly one of the most important figures in my life.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Genoa is like a mother to me. It is where I learned to live. It gave birth to me and raised me until I was thirty-five years old: and that is no small thing, in fact, it is perhaps almost everything. Today, it seems to me that Genoa has the face of all the poor devils I met in its carruggi, the outcasts I would later find in Sardinia, the “graziose” of Via del Campo.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is loyalty, after all? It's nothing more than a big itch with a strict ban on scratching.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(About the the Sanremo Music Festival If it were still a singing competition, [...] that is, if it were a matter of vocal cords, it could still be considered an almost sporting competition, because vocal cords are still muscles. In my case, I would have to express my feelings, or the technique through which I am able to express them, and I believe that this cannot be a matter of competition.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every evening when I finish a concert, I want to turn to the audience and say: “Everything you have heard so far is completely false, just as the ideals and feelings that led me to write these things and sing them are completely true”. But ideals and feelings are used to construct dreamt-up realities. Reality, the real one, is what awaits us outside the theatre doors. And to change it, if we want to change it, we need concrete, real actions.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I come from Hamburg, I come from Frankfurt, I come from Sardinia, but above all I come from Genoa. Genoa, which every time you find yourself outside, you realise is a city to be missed above all else. In the sense that you are born there and live there until you are twenty – where, as a poet friend of ours said, you burn with unawareness – then at twenty you try to find work and [...] you realise that it is difficult to work there. So you leave. And after you leave, you begin to miss it.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And then suddenly love burst out everywhere.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Genoa is beautiful, you realise it is beautiful when you are far away.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can't write about Genoa because I'm too involved. I don't write anthem because I don't like marches and because nothing can surpass the chants of the Gradinata Nord. If anything, I would have written a love song for Genoa, but I don't do it because to write songs you need to maintain a certain detachment from what you write, whereas Genoa involves me too much.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dear Andrea, I am your friend because you are the only priest who does not want to send me to heaven by force.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(About Paolo Villaggio) I met him for the first time in Pocol, above Cortina; I was an angry kid who swore a lot; he liked me because I was tormented and restless, and he was the same, only he was more controlled, perhaps because he was older than me, so he immediately took on the role of older brother and said to me: “Look, you mustn't swear, you swear to be the centre of attention, you're an arsehole”.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Preghiera in gennaio] I dedicated it to Tenco. It was written, or rather conceived, on the way back from Sanremo, where my ex-wife Enrica Rignon, Anna Paoli and I had rushed to. After seeing Luigi lying in that morgue (outside Sanremo, because they didn't want us there) and then returning to Genoa to wait for the funeral, which was to take place two days later in Cassine, I think, this composition came to me.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Speaking about his album Creuza de mä] Sometimes I felt proud, other times disappointed. But in any case, I always felt a little ashamed to find myself almost forced to leaf through specialised magazines, scrutinising with an almost snail-like eye, out of my sockets, what position my latest, so-called, record had achieved in the charts. Because this meant that the record, as an objective consumer product, had taken on greater importance than the songs for which it existed, and in which I sincerely felt I had lived.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even today, in some so-called primitive ethnic groups, singing still has the fundamental task of freeing people from suffering, alleviating pain and exorcising evil.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was necessary to adapt a language to the sounds produced by these instruments, a language that would glide over them, evoking through sung phonemes, regardless of their immediate comprehensibility, the same atmospheres that the instruments evoked. The most suitable language for us seemed to be Genoese, with its diphthongs, its hiatuses, its wealth of truncated nouns and adjectives that can be shortened or lengthened almost like the cry of a seagull.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The much-talked-about Genoese school did not exist as a unified movement. Of course, we all knew each other, because Genoa is not such a big city. We would meet, for example, at the bar on Corso d'Italia. There was no coordination, but there was a desire to emulate each other. One of the first songs I wrote was Il testamento, and I remember playing it first to Gino Paoli at his house. He listened to it in silence and at the end he said to me: “It's beautiful, but after a song like this, what else can one write?”. (p. 32)”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I also think that Il testamento di Tito, together with Amico fragile, is my best song. It gives an idea of how laws might change if they were written by those who do not have power. It is another of the songs written from the heart, without fear of appearing rhetorical, and I can still sing it today without tiring. (p. 35)”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: What is Fabrizio De André afraid of today? De André: Death, for sure. Not so much my own death, which, when it comes, if it gives me time to realise it, will make me feel my fair share of fear, but rather the death that surrounds us, the lack of attachment to life that I see in many of our fellow human beings who kill themselves for reasons that are certainly much more futile than the value of life. I am afraid of what I do not understand, and I really cannot understand this.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: What is the wish you would like to fulfil? De André: [...] definitely, anywhere, anytime, to meet my father again.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: What value do utopia and dreams have for you? De André: I think that a man without utopia, without dreams, without ideals, that is to say without passions and without enthusiasm, would be a monstrous animal made simply of instinct and reason, a kind of wild boar with a degree in pure mathematics.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: What is song for you today, deep down? De André: Song is an old girlfriend with whom I would still very much like to spend a good part of my life, always and only if I am welcome.”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Genoa. What does it mean to me? I was lucky enough to be born into this ethnic group, in this small world where a different language is spoken, which was part of a much larger state but with its own language, cuisine and culture. This makes you feel so close to these people who share your diversity, you feel different from the rest of the world, you are a member of a large family of seven hundred thousand people who have their own customs and traditions. And if you arrive in Milan, you arrive as an immigrant from the South. (pp. 8-9)”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where does the nostalgia we all feel for Genoa come from? You say, and you are right, that our musical tradition is full of emigrants who miss their city and dream of returning to it, which is also found in Neapolitan songs and those of other seaside cities, while this is not the case in Milan or Turin. But perhaps this is because the Milanese were born rich and do business on the mainland, while the Genoese were born poor and had to trade by sea, far from home. (p. 9)”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...] Genoa is also the scent and flavour of its cuisine. Like those of pesto, which Dori and I make in Milan or Gallura, putting lots of walnuts in it so that it doesn't taste of mint: as happens when you make pesto far from Genoa. Because only basil from Genoa “doesn't taste of it”. (p. 10)”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I remember one day I grabbed my mother and pushed her against a window, so hard that she cut herself all over, and my father decided to teach me a lesson. He gave me so many lashes that my bum swelled up like a pandolce, then he asked me, 'Do you have anything to say to your mother? I said no. In retaliation, he took my sticker albums – I had five or six – and burned them all in the middle of the room. I remained impassive. He grabbed a shoe and hit me on the head with the heel. Then he repeated, “Do you have anything to say to your mother?” 'No,' I replied. He left, and I had won. (p. 20)”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I used rubber picks to mimic the style of Jimmy Hall, a guitarist who produced a sound as soft as snow. (p. 42)”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(About Luigi Tenco) Let's leave him in peace, let's stop digging him up. (p. 57)”
Fabrizio De André (1940–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source