Quotes on Polo

I believe it was God's will that we should come back, so that men might know the things that are in the world, since, as we have said in the first chapter of this book, no other man, Christian or Saracen, Mongol or pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice.

I speak and speak, [...] but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. [...] It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.

I know it's not enjoying my success to do this, but when I see too many Polo shirts, I say to myself, 'That's the end of that.'

I'm a little like Marco Polo, going around and mixing cultures.

Marco Polo tells the tale of The Old Man in the Mountains and how he recruits new members to his Band of Assassins by means of drugs, beautiful women, lush gardens, and religious promises. The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

I did not write half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.

They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.