An Italian Education Quotes

“And I think, one of the reasons I've stayed in Italy is that I believe, perhaps erroneously, perhaps sentimentally, perhaps merely in reaction to my own childhood of church bells and rainy weekends - I do believe that kids have a better time here, that adolescence is more fun here. Certainly I never saw a group of people so confident and at ease with themselves and their youth. I wish it for my children.”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“For my own part, I can't help thinking that while the trend away from formal discipline is clearly general across the Western world, no people is perhaps as perplexed as the Italians with the whole problem of how to make a child do what it does not want to do. Perhaps because Italian parents so rarely find any good reason for not doing what they want to do.”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“One of the most characteristic Italian emotions, it seems to me, is that mixture of envy, perplexity and wonder that comes when one realises that others are working the system far more effectively than oneself - said com'è? - this together with the knowledge that they are doing so and will continue to do so with absolute impunity. Until it dawns on you that the system was invented in order to be worked in this way.”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“Blessed is that family where there are old people, says an ancient proverb, and happy the children who heed the counsel of the old, for it's as if they had already enjoyed a long life. Love your grandparents, children, for they love you as the sons and daughters of their sons and daughters, and hence with a double tenderness. If you see they love your company, don't leave them alone, and when it's their birthday, never forget to with them many happy returns, 'A hundred more happy returns, Granny and Granddad!”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“...the glass of wine I've drunk is beginning to take a few corners off the world...”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“Your son. From nought to five he is your master, from five to ten your servant, from ten to fifteen your secret counsellor, and after that, your friend - or your enemy.”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“Indeed, we had caused some surprise by having a child not only while renting, but while renting in precarious circumstances, in furnished property, and without the proper contract and strict rent control enjoyed by most tenants.”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“Is it worth going into this admission process in just a little more detail? I think so, if only to appreciate the tendency the Italian authorities have of offering everybody a price (to endear themselves to the electorate) and then, since they can't actually afford to give it to everybody, setting up a maze, or obstacle race, to make sure that only those who really haggle for it (not those who need it) actually get it.”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“One takes great pleasure in seeing children acquire skills one does not have, seeing them become, thankfully, different from oneself.”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“Everywhere the culture reproduces itself, reflects itself, as in a hall of mirrors - the landscape, the language, the currency, all bouncing off each other, recreating each other - and in the midst of those mirrors, both reflected and projecting, stands the child, discovering himself in these castle walls, these terraced hills, the liquid words he speaks, and now in this coloured paper, too.”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“So Michele and Stefi's friends don't receive regular pocket monty, which is a very Anglo-Saxon, puritan thing, which its obsession with system and clarity, benefits and punishments, its perverse desire to have little children learn to manage given amounts of money over given periods of time.”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education