Elena Ferrante Quotes

Why, then, even when I advanced, was I so quick to retreat? Why did I always have ready a gracious smile, a happy laugh, when things went badly? Why, sooner or later, did I always find plausible excuses for those who made me suffer?

Elena Ferrante

• Smile
• Excuses
• Retreat
• Advanced

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I have a nice smile, pretty lips, and big round cheeks. They help me look like a teenager.

  

  Gabourey Sidibe
  • Help
  • Pretty
  • Me

• Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.

  

  Paramahansa Yogananda
  • Heart
  • May
  • Soul

• I have a smile 24/7.

  

  Candis Cayne
  • Smile

• If women had to promise to provide for a man for a lifetime before he removed his veil and showed her his smile, would we think of this as a system of female privilege?

  

  Warren Farrell
  • Women
  • Man
  • Smile

• My children and my husband make me smile. My work makes me smile.

  

  Victoria Beckham Spice Girls
  • Work
  • Children
  • Husband

• From a very young age, music was very much in my house. I would sit with my mom, with the old LPs, listening to The Beatles and Carly Simon and Lionel Richie. The old LPs used to have the lyrics. From there, I would put on dance and music displays for my family, just to entertain them and make people laugh and smile.

  

  Lara Pulver
  • People
  • Music
  • Family

• I get accused of having a haughty smugness. I have a lopsided mouth. I can't help it. I was born with it. It looks as if I am smirking. I have had my publicist tell me, 'Don't do that smile on the red carpet.' I'm, like, 'That's my smile.'

  

  Natalie Dormer
  • Smile
  • Smugness
  • Lopsided Mouth

• I'm not proud of it, but I'm a great liar when I travel. I smile and lie, and things are smooth.

  

  Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Great
  • Proud
  • Travel

• Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

  

  Samuel Johnson
  • Wise
  • Smile
  • Rich

• Crowds are the most difficult thing for me these days because I have to walk with my head down and my eyes averted. There's still that part of me that wants to hold my head up, make eye contact and smile.

  

  Cameron Diaz
  • Up
  • Eyes
  • Eye

• Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

  

  Yoko Ono
  • Life
  • Morning
  • Smile

• The 'good' mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the 'bad' mother, unafraid of a joke and a glass of wine, richly self-expressive, scornful of suburban values, who is, in reality, good.

  

  Rachel Cusk
  • Good
  • Bad
  • Mother

• Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile politely and shut my earlids. I am a writer, not a caterer. There are plenty of caterers. But what children most want and need is what we and they don't know they want and don't think they need, and only writers can offer it to them.

  

  Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Writing
  • Children
  • Book

• If ignorance is bliss, then knock the smile off my face.

  

  Zack de la Rocha Rage Against the Machine
  • Smile
  • Ignorance

• For ne'erWas flattery lost on poet's ear:A simple race! they waste their toilFor the vain tribute of a smile.

  

  Walter Scott
  • Lost
  • Simple
  • Smile

• What is the reason that we find it so satisfactory to make excuses to ourselves-the only persons in the world to whom they must be altogether needless ?

  

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon
  • World
  • Excuses

• We have no time for excuses.

  

  Ben Carson
  • Time
  • Excuses

• When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill.

  

  Condoleezza Rice
  • People
  • Stop
  • Evil

• It's not how deep you go, it's how you go deep.

  

  Ida Pauline Rolf
  • Way
  • Deep
  • Approach

• What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you. That's not just my theory or point of view, it's physics. Life is an energy of giving and receiving... Those that are greedy, hit a road block where they are alone. Give more than you receive and be grateful for those around you.

  

  Oprah Winfrey
  • Life
  • Giving
  • Energy

• ...if what I say is responsible, I alone am responsible for the saying of it...

  

  Edward R. Murrow
  • Alone

• I am thoroughly enjoying spending the majority of my time with entrepreneurs. I find that their enthusiasm, dedication, willingness to take huge risks and desire to make a dramatic impact quite inspiring.

  

  Maynard Webb
  • Time
  • Desire
  • Dedication

• That's the power of fiction, that it can take the collective and make it personal.

  

  Anthony Doerr
  • Power

• Why, then, even when I advanced, was I so quick to retreat? Why did I always have ready a gracious smile, a happy laugh, when things went badly? Why, sooner or later, did I always find plausible excuses for those who made me suffer?

  

  Elena Ferrante
  • Smile
  • Excuses
  • Retreat