I also want to go to an Italian island and do cuisine properly with some famous Italian chef and, like, his mother.

On the Italian side, we can trace the family back 2,000 years. I have a cousin in Rome, a famous archaeologist, Count Andrea Carandini, who was in Lombardy and came across some pottery with the original name of the family, Carandinus, painted on it.

Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways, women, gambling, and farming. My family chose the slowest one.

I eat a little bit of everything and not a lot of anything. Everything in moderation. I know that's really hard for people to understand, but I grew up in an Italian family where we didn't overdo anything. We ate pasta, yes, but not a lot of it.

All of my youth growing up in my Italian family was focused around the table. That's where I learned about love.

Italian food is seasonal. It is simple. It is nutritionally sound. It is flavorful. It is colorful. It's all the things that make for a good eating experience, and it's good for you.

For me, I just like to cut out bread. I like to keep the good carbs in my diet - I love pasta and Italian food - but I try to eat just that on the weekends and cut out carbs during the week.

I can design a collection in a day and I always do, cause I've always got a load of Italians on my back, moaning that it's late.

Our nation is built upon a history of immigration, dating back to our first pioneers, the Pilgrims. For more than three centuries, we have welcomed generations of immigrants to our melting pot of hyphenated America: British-Americans; Italian-Americans; Irish-Americans; Jewish-Americans; Mexican-Americans; Chinese-Americans; Indian-Americans.

My father's family were Italian ice cream men, and the knowledge was passed on, so I ran an ice cream van while I was dating my wife.

Our last jam session was this past Christmas. Dad played his harmonica, mom sang in English and Italian, and I played guitar. I'm so happy that we could share that musical experience for one last time.

I joined a big club like Monaco and it was extraordinary for my growth as a player. That gave me the chance to break into the national squad, win the 1998 World Cup, the EURO in 2000, and make the leap to Italian football.

True, I drive an Italian sports car around Hollywood, but the radio is tuned to a country-and-Western station.

I'm sick of seeing the immigrants in the hotels and the Italians who sleep in cars. This is the racist country.

The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about - or as a ritual like filling up a car - but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon.

Italian style is a natural attitude. It is about a life of good taste. It doesn't have to be expensive. Simple but with good taste. Luxury is possible to buy. Good taste is not.

The anger that Uncle Junior has comes from my background. My father was the son of an Italian immigrant, and I've seen the fire of the Italian temperament. It can be explosive sometimes in ways that are both funny and tragic.

The word Profondo in Italian means "Profound." And it is also the word for "deep". There are always different perspectives and ways to look at things in life. But the most important way is the way that gives meaning to you and to your life. And that is not up to anyone's definition or translation but our own.

I've been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators - Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement they engendered. I'm continually inspired by Rembrandt, Breughel (I've wondered whether his brilliant "Tower of Babel" had inspired Tolkien's description of Minas Tyrith), Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Turner; it's not necessarily that they influence my work in any particular direction, more that their example raises my spirits, re-affirms my belief in the power of images to move and delight us, and shows me how much further I have to go, how much is possible. Having visited Venice and Florence for the first time, I am besotted with the Italian Renaissance artists - Botticelli, Bellini, da Vinci and others. Their work is calm, controlled, and yet each face and landscape contains such passion. In Botticelli's paintings, every pebble and every leaf is rendered with a religious devotion; there is reverence inherent in paying such close attention to every stone, turning painting itself into a form of worship, an act of prayer.

Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and THIS makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captain of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors... In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.

I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.

"Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can't be denied. It's beautiful and messy

I love the simplicity the ingredients the culture the history and the seasonality of Italian cuisine. In Italy people do not travel. They cook the way grandma did using fresh ingredients and what is available in season.