The Seasons In The City Quotes

“The wind, coming to the city from far away, bring it unusual gifts, notice by only a few sensitive souls, such as hay-fever victims, who sneeze at the pollen from flowers of other lands.”

“On his way to work each morning, Marcovaldo walked beneath the green foliage of a square with trees, a bit of public garden, isolated in the junction of four streets.”

“He raised his eyes among the boughs of the horse-chestnuts, where they were at their thickest and allowed yellow rays only to glint in the shade transparent with sap; and he listened to the racket of the sparrows, tone-deaf, invisible on the branches.”

“His pillow clutched under his arm, he went for a stroll. He went and looked at the moon, which was full, big above tress and roofs. He came back towards the bench, giving it a fairly wide berth out of fear of disturbing them, but actually hoping to irritate them a little and persuade them to go away.”

“The routes birds follow, as they migrate southwards or northwards, in autumn or in spring, rarely cross the city. Their flights cleave the heavens high above the striped humps of fields and along the edge of woods...”

“it was Saturday; and Marcovaldo spent his free half-day circling the bed of dirt with an absent air, keeping an eye on the street-cleaner in the distance and on the mushrooms, and calculating how much time they needed to ripen.”

“But by now Marcovaldo’s sleep had reached a zone where sounds no longer arrived, and these, even so graceless and rasping, came is if muffled in a soft halo, perhaps because of the very consistency of the garbage packed into the trucks. ”

“Marcovaldo is a poor workman living in an industrial city in northern Italy during the 1950′s and ‘60’s. The stories are placed within the book in a seasonal order; in other words, the first story takes place in Spring, the second in Summer, and so on, consecutively. ”

“Although he is a factory worker in an urban area, Marcovaldo ‘possessed an eye ill-suited to city life,’ and is always noticing the signs of nature in his environment, “discovering the changes of season, the yearnings of his heart, and the woes of his existence”

“Where Marcovaldo himself is thrilled by nature, his children, who are thoroughly urban, seem to misunderstand any references to natural things.”