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FLORENCE

Chaim Bertman, from
"Stand-up Tragedian" (2001):
                                               STANDUP_TRAGEDIAN


  "The underlying sickness of Florence was
  its antique beauty.  This town had
  needed an enema since 1541.  The natives
  lived inside a house full of Titians and
  Caravaggios, and their mothers were
  strict.  Young Florentines were taught,
  like princes of an established line, not
  to make any sudden movements, to avoid
  horses, sunlight, and foreign music.
  They were never to disturb the laurel
  leaves on their heads, the burden of
  this fifteenth-century architectural
  masterpiece.  Thereby, death had been
  banished from the city.  The children of
  Florence were born old and domesticated,
  and they descended from that into a
  vaporous knowing.  The blood and health
  of the city were in its foreign
  visitors, pirates with cameras, tourists
  who thought that every day was New
  Year's Eve."




                                   Paul Graham, from "Good Bad Attitude"
                                   [ref]
                                   in the book "Hackers & Painters" (2004):

                                      "I lived for a while in
                                      Florence. But after I'd been
                                      there a few months I realized
                                      that what I'd been unconsciously
                                      hoping to find there was back in
                                      the place I'd just left. The
                                      reason Florence is famous is that
                                      in 1450, it was New York. In 1450
                                      it was filled with the kind of
                                      turbulent and ambitious people
                                      you find now in America. (So I
                                      went back to America.)"



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