"Countless times, in the course of the following winter, spring, and summer, I went back to what had happened (or rather, had not happened) between me and Micòl inside old Perotti's beloved carriage. If on that rainy afternoon, when the radiant Indian summer of '38 suddenly ended, I had at least managed to speak to her – I told myself bitterly – perhaps things between us would have gone differently from the way they went. Speak to her, kiss her: it was then, when everything was still possible – I never ceased repeating to myself – that I should have done it! And I forgot to ask myself the essential question: whether in that supreme moment, unique, irrevocable – a moment, perhaps, that decided my life and hers – I had really been capable of attempting an act, a word of any sort. Did I already know, then, for example, that I was in love, really? Well, no, not at all: I didn't know. I didn't know then, and I wasn't to know for at least another two weeks, when the bad weather, now steady, irreparably scattered our fortuitous company.

I remember: the insistent rain, not letting up for days and days – and after, it would be winter, the severe grim winter of the Po Valley – immediately made further visits to the garden impossible. And yet, despite the change of season, everything went on in such a way that I could have the delusion that nothing, basically, had changed."

- The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani