How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"[For] two thousand and five hundred years we've been a colony. I don't say that in complaint; it's our fault. But even so we're worn out and exhausted." (4.85)
Fabrizio tries to explain to a visiting politician why he's not interested in becoming a senator for united Italy. Frankly, he feels as though his entire race of people is exhausted from thousands of years of being ruled by other people. It's in his blood, and he's got no fight left in him. Definitely not enough to become a politician.
Quote #5
"Sleep, my dear Chevalley, sleep, that is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate anyone who tries to wake them, even in order to bring them the most wonderful of gifts." (4.88)
According to Fabrizio, Sicilians just want peace and quiet. They don't want to work hard because they're not interested in making any money. They just want to live as cheaply and peacefully as possible, and they're not interested in any of the "progress" that modern, competitive people try to force on them.
Quote #6
"[Our] sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our laziness, our spiced and drugged sherbets, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is for death again." (4.88)
Fabrizio believes that deep down, all Sicilians are attracted to death. That doesn't mean that they all want to commit suicide. They just want to live with as little stimulation as possible. They want the intensity in their brains to be turned down as far as possible, which eventually brings them to a point that resembles death.