And I don't want to live anywhere where I am famous. It makes me very, very uncomfortable, because it conveys an advantage over people, and I don't like that.

— Donna Leon

And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.

— Donna Leon

Guilt, although a lawyer, never lied; at least not to his friends.

— Donna Leon

Her mask gave no sign of how this affected her.

— Donna Leon

I came to Venice for the first time in 1968 and was lucky enough to make the acquaintanceship, and then the friendship, of two Venetians, Roberta and Franco, who remain my best friends here after almost 50 years.

— Donna Leon

.if you put people on a diet, they start thinking about food. Or if you make someone stop smoking, all they think about is cigarettes. It seems logical enough to me that if you tell a person he can't have sex, he's going to be obsessive about the subject. Then to give him the power to tell other people how to run their sex lives, well, that's just asking for trouble. In a way, it's like having a blind person teach Art History, isn't it?

— Donna Leon

I never wanted to be rich or successful or famous. I just wanted to be happy and have fun.

— Donna Leon

I raised my hand and asked if God was a spirit. And he said yes, He was. So I asked if it was right that a spirit was different from a person because it didn't have a body, wasn't material. And when he agreed, I asked how, if God was a spirit, He could be a man, if He didn't have a body or anything.

— Donna Leon

Most people — however much they might deny it — had an idea of what they were getting into when they got into it.

— Donna Leon

Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will

— Donna Leon