President Sergio Mattarella told a delegation from the Strega Book Prize on its 80th anniversary Tuesday that it would be beneficial if the powerful read more instead of writing autobiographies.
We must remember "the decisive contribution of culture in accompanying the birth of the new Italy." A contribution, in that period, "to taking weapons out of hands and putting a book in our hands," said Mattarella, receiving a delegation from the Strega Prize at the Quirinale Palace, 80 years after its birth.
The Strega Prize, he added, "sent a message that urged us to read, and therefore to reflect, and to seek to understand," which "we feel the need for, very intensely, even in this period" because it helps "try to understand events and how to avoid temptations.
"If I may joke, he added, it is that if some of the world's powerful people, instead of cultivating improbable and imaginary autobiographies, dedicated themselves to reading, we would probably all benefit greatly."
