“One evening in the Stube, old Sonner put an end to the usual mumblings about betrayal, saying, ‘It’s all nonsense!
Even children know we won the war. But I would never have dreamed that they’d give us the whole of Italy!’”
—CLAUS GATTERER, Bel paese, brutta gente

“But, I mean, they’re all Germans there!”
—MARIANO RUMOR, after a holiday in Val Pusteria
in 1968 revealed to him the existence
of a language minority in the country
of which he was Prime Minister.

“So you’re Italians ruled by Germans? Lucky you!”
—INDRO MONTANELLI

“Call the world, if you please the ‘vale of Soul-making.’
Then you will find out the use of the world.”
—JOHN KEATS, Letter to George and Georgiana Keats

“Let Eve (for I have drench’d her eyes)
Here sleep below, while thou to foresight wak’st.”
—JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost, book XI