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

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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

• You can achieve almost any goal you set for yourself as long as you have the discipline to pay the price to do what you need to do and to never give up. You can make excuses or you can make progress. You choose.

  

  Brian Tracy
  • Up
  • Long
  • Giving

• I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.

  

  Cyril Connolly
  • Style

• I definitely like to eat.

  

  Sam Trammell
  • Like
  • Eat
  • Definitely

• SMITH & TINKER'S Patent Double-Action, Extra-Responsive, Thought-Creating, Perfect-Talking MECHANICAL MAN Fitted with our Special Clock-Work Attachment. Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything but Live. Manufactured only at our Works at Evna, Land of Ev. All infringements will be promptly Prosecuted according to Law.

  

  L. Frank Baum
  • Work
  • Live
  • Law

• If I didn't do well at Wimbledon maybe Chinese people will forget about me.

  

  Li Na
  • People
  • Chinese

• 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