Top 90 Mark T. Sullivan Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Doing favors,” Leyers said. “They help wondrously over the course of a lifetime. When you have done men favors, when you look out for others so they can prosper, they owe you. With each favor, you become stronger, more supported. It is a law of nature.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

52. “You Were Never Lovelier.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

53. “But the Nazi occupation of Italy and the Catholic underground railroad, which was formed to save the Italian Jews, have received scant attention.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

54. “Pino took one last look at the Beltraminis before walking south toward the telephone exchange, feeling like the blast had cut out part of his heart.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

55. “What could make me not listen to the music in my heart every time I see you?”

— Mark T. Sullivan

56. “When you have done men favors, when you look out for others so they can prosper, they owe you. With each favor, you become stronger, more supported. It is a law of nature.” “Yes?”

— Mark T. Sullivan

57. “Let not your hearts be troubled,’” the cardinal of Milan said. “Those six words of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, are more powerful than any bullet, cannon, or bomb. The people who hold these six words true are unafraid, and they are strong. ‘Let not your hearts be troubled.’ People who hold these words true will surely defeat tyrants and their armies of fear. It has been this way for nineteen hundred and forty-four years. And I promise you it will be this way for all time to come.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

58. “The sheer brutality of it ate at him. He hated war. He hated the Germans for starting it. For what? Putting your boot on another man’s head and stealing him blind, until someone with a bigger boot comes along to kick you out of the way? As far as Pino was concerned, wars were about murder and thievery. One army killed to steal the hill; then another killed to steal it back.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

59. “You see, Vorarbeiter, in the game of life, it is always preferable to be a man of the shadows, and even the darkness, if necessary. In this way, you run things, but you are never, ever seen.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

60. “He waited until Leyers was inside, and then headed back toward Piazzale Loreto and Beltramini’s Fresh Fruits and Vegetables. In less than a block, he’d endured enough vile looks to realize he’d be smart to take off the swastika armband and stick it in his back pocket. That made things better. People barely gave him a glance. He was in uniform, and he wasn’t SS or Wehrmacht. That was all they would care about.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

61. “But most people are essentially good. You have to believe that.” “Even the Nazis?” Father Re hesitated, and then said, “I can’t explain the Nazis. I don’t think the Nazis can explain the Nazis.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

62. “Pino ignored her, focusing instead on the locomotive in an apron chugging out of the kitchen.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

63. “Right there – listening and complimenting – you’re ahead of eighty percent of every guy on the face of the earth.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

64. “Working a man to death is the same as shooting a man to death,” the priest said. “Just a different choice of weapons.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

65. “No good-byes among old friends.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

66. “All great things come from love, don’t they?” “I guess they do,” Anna said, and looked away. “The worst things, too.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

67. “Alberto Ascari says there have been atrocities, Father,” Pino said. “The Nazis have killed priests helping Jews. They’ve pulled them right off the altar while they were saying Mass.” “We have heard that, too,” the priest said. “But we can’t stop loving our fellow man, Pino, because we’re frightened. If we lose love, all is lost. We just have to get smarter.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

68. “World War II was a news dispatch, nothing more, listened to and gone in the very next moment – replaced by thoughts of his three favorite subjects: girls and music and food.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

69. “It came in rose fingers that fanned across a blue sky framed by snowcapped mountains.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

70. “Uncle Albert fished in a canvas bag for bread, wine, cheese, and dried salami. The Beltraminis broke out five ripe cantaloupes. Pino’s father sat in the grass next to his violin case, his arms wrapped around his knees and an enchanted look on his face.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

71. “To the end of homicidal dictators with weird black bangs and puny square mustaches!” The.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

72. “You start by looking right around you for the blessings you have. When you find them, be grateful.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

73. “The mental torture went on and on until, on one of those long beach walks where Anna still lived in his mind, Pino remembered her telling him that she didn’t believe much in the future, that she tried to live moment by moment, looking for reasons to be grateful, trying to create her own happiness and grace, and to use them as a means to a good life in the present and not a goal to be achieved some other day.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

74. “For the eight thousand Italian Jews who could not be saved. For the millions taken slave by the Nazi war machine, and the countless who did not make it home. And for Robert Dehlendorf, who heard the tale first, and rescued me.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

75. “I’m busy at the moment, Albert,” replied Pino’s Austrian aunt Greta, who was waiting on the Nazi. She was a tall, thin woman with short brown hair and an easy smile. The German was smoking and examining a leather-wrapped cigarette case.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

76. “Faith is a strange creature,” Schuster said. “Like a falcon that nests year after year in the same place, but then flies away, sometimes for years, only to return again, stronger than ever.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

77. “That sounded like love, Pino thought. When I fall in love, I think it will feel just like that.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

78. “Let not your heart be troubled. Have faith.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

79. “He says to give thanks for every day, no matter how flawed. And to have faith in God and a better tomorrow.” Anna smiled.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

80. “They shared a long silence. “What do we do, Father?” “We have faith, Pino. We have faith and continue to do what is right.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

81. “Pino closed his eyes and tried to go with the music, which was as gentle and playful as a summer stream. He tried to imagine the stream, tried to find peace in it, and sleep, and nothingness.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

82. “The problem is, most people get frustrated when they do not find what they are looking for or don’t do what they are trying to do easily and in a short period of time. They give up after a couple of failures or a couple of years of struggle. The dream that once lit up their heart now begins to darken it, and their thinking changes.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

83. “How do men think of such wickedness?” Anna asked as wax dripped down the candle and pooled about the holder. “Don’t they fear for their souls?” Pino thought about Rauff and the Black Shirts wearing the hoods. “I don’t think men like that care about their souls,” Pino said, finishing the veal. “It’s like they’ve already gone to evil, and going a little deeper won’t matter.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

84. “People are dying and you’re playing music?” Several people came into the hallway behind his mother, including his aunt, uncle, and father. Michele said, “Music is how we survive such times, Pino.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

85. “Do you do everything with such intensity?” She smiled, cocked her head, and said, “Well, of course. If you’re going to do something, don’t be half-assed about it.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

86. “Try to be grateful for every setback or tragedy, because by living through them, you become stronger.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

87. “What you seek is what you will find, but only if you hunt it with all your heart and mind.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

88. “When at last he took off his glasses, the sun was setting, casting the lake in coppers and golds. He wiped away tears and put his glasses back on. Then he looked over, gave me a sad, sweet smile, and put his palm across his heart. “Forgive an old man his memories,” Pino said. “Some loves never die.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

89. “If we lose love, all is lost.”

— Mark T. Sullivan

90. “God damn it! Where’s my wine?”

— Mark T. Sullivan