"No, I dont want to commit suicide, but I should like to fade away and die gently. To depart from life as one gets out of a bath."
Pitigrilli was the pseudonym of Dino Segre, an Italian writer who made his living as a journalist and novelist. His most noted novel was Cocaina (1921), published under his pseudonym and placed on the list of prohibited books by the Catholic Church because of his treatment of drug use and sex. It has been translated into several languages and re-issued in several editions. Pitigrilli published nov
"Egli sapeva che le fanciulle cominciano con un ritardo di cinque minuti e finisco con i ritardi di quindici giorni e anche più. Tutta la morale sessuale non tende, in fondo, che a scongiurare, nelle fanciulle, il pericolo dei ritardi."
"[T]he distance between sympathy and sensuality is as short as that which separates those two words in the dictionary."
"Nel collegio dei Barnabiti aveva imparato il latino, a servir messa ed a giurare il falso. Tre cose di cui si può aver bisogno da un momento allaltro. Ma uscendo dal collegio le dimenticò tutte e tre. Studiò medicina per alcuni anni; ma allesame di patologia chirurgica gli dissero: «Non posso permetterle di dare lesame con la caramella allocchio. O si toglie la caramella o non dà lesame» «Ebbene, io non dò lesame» rispose Tito alzandosi. E rinunziò alla laurea."
"We have to defend views we dont share and impose them on the public; deal with questions we dont understand and vulgarize them for the gallery. We cant have ideas of our own, we have to have those of the editor; and even the editor doesnt have the right to think with his own head, because when hes sent for by the board of directors he has to stifle his own views, if he has any, and support those of the shareholders."
"Conferences are assemblies of people who argue about how to conduct an argument and end by sending a telegram of congratulation to the minister."
"I work because I need to have two thousand francs in my pocket every month, but I have no desire to glorify work either by enthusiasm or envy or emulation. Life is a mere waiting room in which we spend time before entering into the void. Who would think of working in a waiting room? While awaiting our turn we chat, we look at the pictures on the walls. But work? There is no point in it, if when our turn comes to go into the next room we shall no longer see anything."