I think I was lucky to be exposed to American life when both the United States and I were young and full of stupendous illusions.

Americans (as seen from a distance) were known to get things done, ruthlessly, meticulously, quickly, against all obstacles.

In those years the adjective "American," added to any noun, indicated something naturally excellent, a drastic improved version of a dreary Old World article, or a diabolically new invention.

Many Americans preferred to live in a consoling world of their own creation, just as many of them preferred the synthetic, the make-believe, the man-made products, to those of God, in other words the imitation chemical vanilla.

She was as unmistakably American as the pink two-cent Washington postage stamp, as the Stars and Stripes, definitely more American in my eyes than the frizzy-haired big-bosomed dolls who won the title of Miss America each year at Atlantic City

The Italian way of life cannot be considered a success except by temporary visitors. It solves no problems. It makes them worse.

Winning wars, after all, is the ultimate test not of the quality of single men but of their capacity to work together and accept common sacrifices.

Some of these teen-aged innocent angels were consummate experts in the diabolical arts of keeping a boy, or a number of boys at the same time, in a frenzied state of hopeful uncertainty.

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 fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.

Public and private food in America has become eatable, here and there extremely good. Only the fried potatoes go on unchanged, as deadly as before.