Mediterranean Quotes

“Watching Italians eat (especially men, I have to say) is a form of tourism the books don't tell you about. They close their eyes, raise their eyebrows into accent marks, and make sounds of acute appreciation. It's fairly sexy. Of course I don't know how these men behave at home, if they help with the cooking or are vain and boorish and mistreat their wives. I realized Mediterranean cultures have their issues. Fine, don't burst my bubble. I didn’t want to marry these guys, I just wanted to watch. (p. 247)”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

“To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.”
― Elizabeth David, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

“It is better to die of drink then to die of thirst.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“Greek customs such as wine drinking were regarded as worthy of imitation by other cultures. So the ships that carried Greek wine were carrying Greek civilization, distributing it around the Mediterranean and beyond, one amphora at a time. Wine displaced beer to become the most civilized and sophisticated of drinks—a status it has maintained ever since, thanks to its association with the intellectual achievements of Ancient Greece.”
― Tom Standage, A History of the World in 6 Glasses

“Who can resist sleep at two or three in the afternoon in these sunlit parts of the Mediterranean?”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“En Méditerranée
Dans ce bassin où jouent
Des enfants aux yeux noirs,
Il y a trois continents
Et des siècles d'histoire,
Des prophètes des dieux,
Le Messie en personne.
Il y a un bel été
Qui ne craint pas l'automne,
En Méditerranée.

Il y a l'odeur du sang
Qui flotte sur ses rives
Et des pays meurtris
Comme autant de plaies vives,
Des îles barbelées,
Des murs qui emprisonnent.
Il y a un bel été
Qui ne craint pas l'automne,
En Méditerranée.

Il y a des oliviers
Qui meurent sous les bombes
Là où est apparue
La première colombe,
Des peuples oubliés
Que la guerre moissonne.
Il y a un bel été
Qui ne craint pas l'automne,
En Méditerranée.

Dans ce bassin, je jouais
Lorsque j'étais enfant.
J'avais les pieds dans l'eau.
Je respirais le vent.
Mes compagnons de jeux
Sont devenus des hommes,
Les frères de ceux-là
Que le monde abandonne,
En Méditerranée.

Le ciel est endeuillé,
Par-dessus l'Acropole
Et liberté ne se dit plus
En espagnol.
On peut toujours rêver,
D'Athènes et Barcelone.
Il reste un bel été
Qui ne craint pas l'automne,
En Méditerranée.”
― Georges Moustaki

“Who that has ever visited the borders of this classic sea, has not felt at the first sight of its waters a glow of reverent rapture akin to devotion, and an instinctive sensation of thanksgiving at being permitted to stand before these hallowed waves? All that concerns the Mediterranean is of the deepest interest to civilized man, for the history of its progress is the history of the development of the world; the memory of the great men who have lived and died around its banks; the recollection of the undying works that have come thence to delight us for ever; the story of patient research and brilliant discoveries connected with every physical phenomenon presented by its waves and currents, and with every order of creatures dwelling in and around its waters. The science of the Mediterranean is the epitome of the science of the world.”
― Edward Forbes, The Natural History of the European Seas

“We all come from the sea and back to the sea we will go. The Mediterranean gave birth to the world.”
― Anders Lustgarten, Lampedusa

“The carved images on the early Minoan sealstones are tantalising, inscrutable. The Nature Goddess is yanked from the soil like a snake or a sheaf of barley; the Mistress of the Animals suckles goats and gazelles. There are male Adorants certainly - up on tiptoe, their outstretched arms hoisted in a kind of heil, their bodies arched suggestively, pelvis forward, before the Goddess - but there are no masculine deities, not a single one in sight. No woman worth her salt, one might think, could fail to be intrigued.”
― Alison Fell, The Element -inth in Greek

“And then I realize: this isn’t dirty water falling from the sky.
It is—literally—blood.
I look up, and a droplet of blood splashes directly into my eye. I curse, rubbing my face, trying to get the blood out, but it’s everywhere, it’s like trying to dry off in the middle of the ocean. Shielding my face as best I can, I stare up into the sky.
I am in the center of a cyclone.
Giant white clouds swirl like a spiraling galaxy above me, the eye a tiny dark speck. The storm rages, throwing out bloody rain like punches, the wind so vicious it tears my clothes and cuts my skin.

Representative Belles’s mind is swirling with dark thoughts—bloody thoughts—and they have created the biggest storm I have ever seen.

I have to stop the cyclone. I have to get him into a peaceful reverie, something that he can hold on to while I root around his brain, looking for answers.
I focus all of my concentration on stopping the bloody rain. The drops come slower and slower. I take a deep breath, imagining the clouds breaking up, spinning into fluffy bits of cotton-candy like clouds. I don’t open my eyes until the sounds of beating rain disappear and I can feel the warmth of the Mediterranean sun on my face.”
― Beth Revis, The Body Electric

“Newcomers to manuscripts sometimes ask what such books tell us about the societies that created them. At one level, these Gospel Books describe nothing, for they are not local chronicles but standard Latin translations of religious texts from far away. At the same time, this is itself extraordinarily revealing about Ireland. No one knows how literacy and Christianity had first reached the islands of Ireland, possibly through North Africa. This was clearly no primitive backwater but a civilization which could now read Latin, although never occupied by the Romans, and which was somehow familiar with the texts and artistic designs which have unambiguous parallels in the Coptic and Greek churches, such as carpet pages and Canon tables. Although the Book of Kells itself is as uniquely Irish as anything imaginable, it is a Mediterranean text and the pigments used in making it include orpiment, a yellow made from arsenic sulphide, exported from Italy, where it is found in volcanoes. There are clearly lines of trade and communication unknown to us.”
― Christopher de Hamel, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts

“Le Métèque
Avec ma gueule de métèque, de juif errant, de pâtre grec
Et mes cheveux aux quatre vents
Avec mes yeux tout délavés, qui me donnent l'air de rêver
Moi qui ne rêve plus souvent.
Avec mes mains de maraudeur, de musicien et de rôdeur
Qui ont pillé tant de jardins
Avec ma bouche qui a bu, qui a embrassé et mordu
Sans jamais assouvir sa faim
Avec ma gueule de métèque, de juif errant, de pâtre grec
De voleur et de vagabond
Avec ma peau qui s'est frottée au soleil de tous les étés
Et tout ce qui portait jupon
Avec mon coeur qui a su faire souffrir autant qu'il a souffert
Sans pour cela faire d'histoire
Avec mon âme qui n'a plus la moindre chance de salut
Pour éviter le purgatoire.

Avec ma gueule de métèque, de juif errant, de pâtre grec
Et mes cheveux aux quatre vents
Je viendrai ma douce captive, mon âme soeur, ma source vive
Je viendrai boire tes vingt ans
Et je serai prince de sang, rêveur, ou bien adolescent
Comme il te plaira de choisir
Et nous ferons de chaque jour, toute une éternité d'amour
Que nous vivrons à en mourir.
Et nous ferons de chaque jour, toute une éternité d'amour
Que nous vivrons à en mourir.”
― Georges Moustaki

“For decades, Lebanon had lured not just revolutionaries but also poets, ideologues, artists, and all types of opposition figures and plotters. A weak state was both a blessing and a curse. In Beirut, there was no dictatorship to muzzle opinions—or your guns. The war had made the small Mediterranean country even more of a haven, a live training ground with a casino and restaurants that still served smoked salmon and caviar during cease-fires. There were breadlines and economic hardship, massacres and literary conferences. Every spy agency was in town: the CIA, the KGB, the Mossad.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“He peeled the towel that imprisoned us away and let it fall. I felt it slide softly off my backside, and I felt, too, his rising excite¬ment, hard, erect, pressing against me.
My nipples were erect, straining, aching, pressed against his strong warm damp chest, the tangle and pattern of his hair. He was a beast, an animal. My excitement was rising again, to match his. It was as if my heart were about to burst or to flip flop, breathless, into a dark abyss.
“Of course, you are crazy, my darling, but, then, so am I.” He kissed me and his oh-so-clever hands seized my waist, tighten¬ing, and then sneaking up my backside, pulling me, pressing me closer, into him. He kissed me again, and his lips moved down my neck to my shoulder and then to my breasts.
“Oh,” I said, “Oh.”
He bent over me, kissing my collarbone and then my breasts, carefully, slowly, his hands traveling down my back, and over my backside; suddenly, he was on his knees, kissing the whorl of 101
my belly button; then he was forcing me open, gently, gently, his tongue exploring caressing, devouring …
“Oh …” I exhaled a deep, shuddering breath. I tipped on the very edge. He bit me, gently. Oooooh!
He pulled in the reins, the bit and bridle, of the frisky frothing filly that I had become; this sudden halt made me wilder, crazier; then, once again, he brought me, trembling, up to the very, very edge of the cliff – of orgasm, of loss of self.
Then he pulled me back. I blinked and trembled. Around the two of us, there was a whole world, a whole universe. It seemed too vivid to be real, like the backdrop in an opera. Venus was brighter and lower now. The sky had turned deep indigo. One by one, stars appeared.”
― Gwendoline Clermont, The Shaming of Gwendoline C

“hoćete kovrčave, crnomanjaste, brkate mediteranske zavodnike, naviknite se da oni mrki i šutljivi, s mrežicama zakosu, istom oko podneva izlaze iz spavaćih soba i ne íao bog da im mater nije popeglala košuliu.”
― Ante Tomić

“Islam will aim to establish itself as the majority in France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Any country, in which they successfully establish themselves will serve as their primary base for the invasion of neighbouring countries (such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Denmark, Hungary and the Mediterranean)”
― Anita B. Sulser PhD, We Are One

“Scrubby evergreen bushes released a strong scent of resin and honey; forests of pine gave way to gentle south-facing vineyards disturbed only by the ululation of early summer cicadas. Sitting up tall on the seat, she craned around eagerly to see what plants thrived naturally.
It was a wild and romantic place, Laurent de Fayols had written, the whole island once bought as a wedding gift to his wife by a man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Mexico. One of three small specks in the Mediterranean known as the Golden Isles, after the oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that glowed like lamps in their citrus groves.
There were few reference works in English that offered information beyond superficial facts about the island, and those she had managed to find were old. The best had been published in 1880, by a journalist called Adolphe Smith. Ellie had been struck by the loveliness of his "description of the most Southern Point of the French Riviera":


'The island is divided into seven ranges of small hills, and in the numerous valleys thus created are walks sheltered from every wind, where the umbrella pines throw their deep shade over the path and mingle their balsamic odor with the scent of the thyme, myrtle and the tamarisk.”
― Deborah Lawrenson, The Sea Garden

“Join my gang, the better whites. It's an open ethnocrypto network, basically we're latinos & mediterraneans and don't trust cash”
― stained hanes, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“Svake godine na otoku se izgradi desetak novih kuća, betonskih spavaonica za napuklu Europu. Već s prvim danima jeseni te kuće, i mnoge druge, ostaju prazne, na otoku je ljudi sve manje. Zbog te količine praznog, tamnog, skoro mrtvog prostora, zbog aveti te arhitekture i urbanizma što se poput karcinoma širi otokom, život preživjelih stanovnika, njihove kuće u kojima gori svjetlo, čuje se žamor, postaju iznimke, incidenti živog u mrtvom okolišu. Kao u priručnoj distopiji i njezinoj slici apokalipse, pred tim tužnim betonskim kolosima, život se sakrio u malene kozmose, tajne rezervate u nepreglednoj turističkoj pustinji.”
― Ivica Prtenjača, Brdo

“While Sardinian authors, like Giuseppe Cossu in 1799, had been lamenting the oversight of the island’s history and “unfaithful geo- graphic maps” for centuries, there still seemed to be a lingering nar- rative of historical ambivalence, as if the island had been an empty stage until the arrival of Phoenicians and Romans; as if Sardinians had no ancient civilization or role in their own destiny—or, more importantly, as if they had no role in shaping Italy and the worlds be- yond their island. I couldn’t help but wonder if we were missing the most vital parts of the island and its history; that perhaps we needed to understand Sardinia if we were to truly understand the rest of Italy.”
― Jeff Biggers, In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy

“The Psomi Mistresses are the keepers of an agrarian cult. These old ways have their roots in ancient Eleusis and Greece. In the myth of Ceres and Persephone. In the novel, Tales of the Mistress, this myth is told in reverse, where Eleone aka Persephone is looking for her mother, Maman Antaia aka Ceres.

***


The Psomi Mistresses represent the source of feminine energy, but not all the Mistresses are women.
And so, in Tales of the Mistress, the Bread of Dreams are part of what's called the pharmakon – an ancient Greek word meaning potion or elixir. And The Psomi are the protectors of not only the Bread of Dreams but also the protectors of their agrarian centered way of life. And death.”
― Dorette E Snover, Tales of the Mistress, A Novel

“The impact of Frontex using drones to locate refugees has caused the loss of many lives at sea. And that's exactly the point.”
― Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World