'A rrobba d''o rraro se magna 'o lupo

What you hold on to out of fear ends up lost all the same.

The wine and the enchanted rain

A neighbor kept twenty cases of good wine in his cellar and never opened a single one: he said they were for special occasions. The year of the big rain the cellar flooded. All the labels came off; the bottles were still fine, but nobody could tell which was which anymore. We drank them in the courtyard that summer, twenty of us, and he laughed more than anyone.