Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish.
I was raised speaking English and Spanish. And I also speak Danish. And I can get by in French and Italian. I've acted in Spanish and English, but when something has to do with emotions, sometimes I feel I can get to the heart of the matter better in Spanish.
If I start feeling down I'll gorge myself on pasta. That usually does the trick. It's the Italian blood in me.
The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci used to say that for her, an interview was like a war. I get the sense that we've forgotten that here in the United States. You turn on the TV, and you see very bland interviews. Journalists in the United States are very cozy with power, very close to those in power.
My father was a trained accountant, a BCom from Sydenham College and a self-taught violinist. In the 1920s, when he was in his teens, he heard a great violinist, Jascha Heifetz, and he was so inspired listening to him that he bought himself a violin, and with a little help from an Italian teacher, he learned to play it.
In 1993, my first documentary was about the civil war in Algeria. That was in French and in Arabic. Another short film I did was silent. What I'm trying to say is that, yes, I'm Italian, and yes, I make films with Italian money, but personally, I've always been invested in the broader world of film-making.
I tried to become a family man. I got married, but it didn't work out. After 22 months we got an annulment. Then I married an Italian girl, which resulted in an immediate annulment. I had two annulments by the time I was 23.
The experience of being a mixed person is all over the place - one of my best friends is Chinese and Italian; my other best friend is Lebanese and Trinidadian. The mix of heritage, culture or identity is something that our country is built on.
You can learn Elvish, if you want. It's a language like Italian and English. You can learn to read it, you can learn to write it, and you can learn to speak it.
I don't speak Spanish, I speak a little of Italian but no Spanish.
I'm finishing my Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance history.
My husband is American but Italian. Then I have the Mexicano side. I see both in my kids. My daughter is more Italian - she leans towards pizza - and my son leans more towards guacamole and puts lime in everything.
So gradually, and then I had an Italian roadster that I built, it took me five years to build it, it was stolen from me and stripped. I said, well maybe we should have another where we shouldn't steal from each other.
Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will.
I worked the drive-through at McDonald's and tried out different accents - Italian, Russian, Irish.
What makes Harlem special is that at any given time, food seekers can not only find food deeply rooted in Southern, Latin and African traditions, but also can taste the newer Senegalese, Chinese, and Italian influences as well.
I would like just one time to be on the cover of Italian Vogue.
In any city or town, you can find a good, rocking Italian place. The most unhealthy thing on the menu? I'll have two of those!
My neighborhood now is all 21-year-old European supermodels. I go to the international newsstand on the corner, and they're all looking for their pictures in 'Italian Vogue.'
I love makeup so much, but I'm very bad at doing my own makeup. Italian girls don't wear very much, so when I do put on makeup it's just very, very natural.
I speak English. I grew up speaking Bengali. This is the normal, the known, the obvious composition of who I am. Then there's Italian, this strange, other component of me that I've just created. It was a creative process just to learn the language, never mind to start expressing myself in it.
I love cheeseburgers, really good Italian food, and really good Mexican food. I look the way I look because I've practiced a lot.
I'm Italian and we curse a lot when we talk.
I grew up in the middle of a block where there was an Irish grocery store on one corner, an Italian bar on another corner and the Nazi Party was on the third corner.
All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.
I'm Italian. I wouldn't know how to play a Jew.
I'm very proud of the Italian heritage of my great-grandparents, who came here from Italy, and how they helped be a part of the American Dream, and that's something we want to continue to make available to everybody who wants to come here.
There is a Jewish tradition of family, too, but then not all Italian or Jewish families are close.
Oddly, I feel more protected when I write in Italian, even though I'm also more exposed.
I came to think that nobody from England could draw American comic books, because they were clearly all done by this sort of Mafia, all these guys with Italian and Irish names who had the whole thing sewn up. It was actually seeing a comic book drawn by Barry Smith, who was about my age, and English.
The earliest movies that I loved were French movies and Italian movies. I grew up watching those kind of movies and often find the truest looks at human nature - you can find them in another country's movies.
Traditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top; Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace. For the Cro-Magnons, space is a metaphysical arena of continually intermittent appearances and disappearances.
When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America - a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks re-created that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee.
Wherever I go, I am Italian. The way I talk, the way I eat, the way femininity is important to me. The way I love Italian food.
I speak English, Portuguese, and French. One day I'd love to learn Italian.
For me, being Italian, I love pizza. Particularly from Naples. I am obsessed.
