I myself spent hours at the Columbia library as intimidated and embarassed as a famished gourmet invited to a dream restaurant where every dish from all the worlds cuisines, past and present, was available on request. – Luigi Barzini
Public and private food in America has become eatable, here and there extremely good. Only the fried potatoes go unchanged, as deadly as before. – Luigi Barzini
Foreign diplomats in Rome disconsolately say, Italy is the opposite of Russia. In Moscow nothing is known, yet everything is clear. In Rome everything is public, there are no secrets, everybody talks, things are at times flamboyantly enacted, yet one understands nothing. – Luigi Barzini
They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fishermans octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach. – Luigi Barzini
Every man should have a library. The works of the grandest masters of literature may now be procured at prices that place them within the reach almost of the very poorest, and we may all put Parnassian singing birds into our chambers to cheer us with the sweetness of their songs. – William E.A. Axon, October 1867