Elena Ferrante Quotes

Everything in the world was in precarious balance, pure risk, and those who didn't agree to take the risk wasted away in a corner, without getting to know life. I understood suddenly why I hadn't had Nino, why Lila had had him. I wasn't capable of entrusting myself to true feelings. I didn't know how to be drawn beyond the limits. I didn't possess that emotional power that had driven Lila to do all she could to enjoy that day and that night. I stayed behind, waiting.

Elena Ferrante

• Risk
• Feelings
• Balance
• Limits
• Understood
• Agree

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Quotes to Explore

• I'd assumed that a deal was a deal when Princeton admitted me, but I was wrong. The price of getting in - to the university itself, and to the great world it promised to open up - was an endless dunning for nebulous services that weren't included in the initial quote.

  

  Walter Kirn
  • Up
  • World
  • Great

• Most of the people nowadays send their things by internet. But I cannot work that way. I like to do it myself.

  

  Manolo Blahnik
  • People
  • Work
  • Myself

• The thing that's good about music-making software like the DAW-kinda systems is that they're all generally the same; the kind of interface is normally laid out in a similar way. Depending on the program, the sounds might be quite different, but they tend to all have a drum machine or synthesizer or a sampler.

  

  Washed Out
  • Good
  • Music
  • Different

• Fortunately, I grew up in a family that was grounded. My mother and father knew how to guide my career and look out for my best interests.

  

  Larenz Tate
  • Up
  • Family
  • Mother

• Some people think that if their opponent plays a beautiful game, it's okay to lose. I don't. You have to be merciless.

  

  Magnus Carlsen
  • People
  • Think
  • Game

• Millions of people gave their lives fighting fascism and imperialism, but Pearl Harbor was the event that forever changed the course of human history.

  

  Sam Graves
  • People
  • History
  • Fighting

• I remember my father, who was 'somebody' in the synagogue, bringing home with him one of the poor men who waited outside to be chosen to share the Passover meal. These patriarchal manners I remember well, although there was about them an air of bourgeois benevolence which was somewhat comic.

  

  Jacob Epstein
  • Men
  • Home
  • Remember

• Use the same measure for selling that you use for purchasing.

  

  Abu Bakr
  • Same
  • Measure
  • Selling

• Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!

  

  E. M. Forster
  • Good
  • Logic
  • Gracious

• The soldier who gropes for glory must submit himself to discipline. Subordination gives strength and security to an army. He that will not submit to it when corrected and improved by the experience of ages does not deserve the proud appellation of a soldier.

  

  Sam Houston
  • Experience
  • Proud
  • Discipline

• The only way I see the world now is through coming out of and growing up and living in Somalia. In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras.

  

  Keinan Abdi Warsame
  • Up
  • Time
  • World

• I got into sports because that was a way to prove your masculinity. I was good at it.

  

  Caitlyn Jenner
  • Good
  • Sports
  • Masculinity

• A lot of writers whom I love, admire and call friends share this feeling, which is this fundamental idea that we're frauds. That we will be pushed out on to the stage, and it will be revealed that the emperor has no clothes.

  

  Damon Lindelof
  • Love
  • Friends
  • Feeling

• There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • History
  • Potential
  • Optimism

• Life wasn't easy growing up; it was frustrating. If I had been a better reader, then that would have come easily, sports would have come easily, everything would have come easily, and I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work.

  

  Caitlyn Jenner
  • Life
  • Up
  • Work

• Many talk about a guest worker program. I think most reasonable people believe that a guest worker program in the farming industry, perhaps in the gardening and landscape industries, is reasonable.

  

  Gary Miller Bad Brains
  • People
  • Believe
  • Gardening

• The subject of Stalin's death permitted a rare blend of invective and speculation-both Hearst papers, as I recall, ran cartoons of Stalin being rebuffed at the gates of Heaven, where Hearst had no correspondents-and I have seldom enjoyed a week of newspaper reading more.

  

  A. J. Liebling
  • Death
  • Reading
  • Heaven

• Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.

  

  Wallace Stevens
  • Religious
  • Spring
  • Easter

• We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we will try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.

  

  Alfred Binet
  • Protest
  • Pessimism
  • Founded

• I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an adventure.

  

  Anthony Bourdain
  • Good
  • Long
  • Food

• Celebrations are great fun: bunting and this and that and the other.

  

  James William Middleton
  • Great
  • Fun

• Cancer is not a straight line. It's up and down.

  

  Elizabeth Edwards
  • Cancer
  • Line
  • Up And Down

• Everything in the world was in precarious balance, pure risk, and those who didn't agree to take the risk wasted away in a corner, without getting to know life. I understood suddenly why I hadn't had Nino, why Lila had had him. I wasn't capable of entrusting myself to true feelings. I didn't know how to be drawn beyond the limits. I didn't possess that emotional power that had driven Lila to do all she could to enjoy that day and that night. I stayed behind, waiting.

  

  Elena Ferrante
  • Risk
  • Feelings
  • Balance