Elena Ferrante Quotes

A woman's body does a thousand different things, toils, runs, studies, fantasizes, invents, wearies, and meanwhile the breasts enlarge, the lips of the sex swell, the flesh throbs with a round life that is yours, your life, and yet pushes elsewhere, draws away from you although it inhabits your belly, joyful and weighty, felt as a greedy impulse and yet repellent, like an insect's poison injected into a vein.

Elena Ferrante

• Life
• Sex
• Weight
• Poison
• Vein

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Quotes to Explore

• When I was 13, I had these episodes where I could just see the world without any words attached to it, without any associations. It was a little bit spooky. A lot of people might have even thought it was pathological. I thought it was interesting.

  

  Barbara Ehrenreich
  • People
  • World
  • Words

• I came from the theater playing leading roles, and when I started doing film and television, I felt as if I had to start from the bottom.

  

  Frances Fisher
  • Doing
  • Start
  • Television

• We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Man
  • Tree
  • Born

• We only have a certain amount of energy for each day. If we use it for the wrong purpose, if we focus on the negative or dwell on whoever hurt us, then we're not going to have the energy we need for the right purposes.

  

  Victoria Osteen
  • Energy
  • Day
  • Focus

• I'm generally competing with the ideal I have set for myself, and I've found that served me very well.

  

  Victoria Principal
  • Me
  • Myself
  • Competing

• We are the recipients of scientific method. We can each be a creative and active part of it if we so desire.

  

  Kary Mullis
  • Desire
  • Creative
  • Active

• I get really excited about other female acts. I feel inspired when I see another women succeeding in music because it makes me realize that if they can do it, I can do it.

  

  Rachel Platten
  • Music
  • Women
  • Feel

• No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves.

  

  Zainab Salbi
  • Up
  • Change
  • Stand

• I received so many hate letters when I breast-fed a starving baby in Africa. I was in Sierra Leone in 2009 and I was weaning my child at that time - she was not there with me. There was a hungry baby who was crying because his mother had no milk, and I thought, 'Why throw away my milk if I can give it to a baby who needs it?'

  

  Salma Hayek
  • Time
  • Why
  • She

• What happens in the music business is that if you step out of your little spot to do something else, the sand falls right into where you stood and you're gone, you're history.

  

  Nancy Sinatra
  • Music
  • Business
  • History

• Female clothing seems to be extremely difficult and almost like a puzzle for a man to take off. But I think if you get there, you win. A kilt is the complete opposite. The kilt is so easy to take off.

  

  Sam Heughan
  • Man
  • Win
  • Puzzle

• I sang the songs in 'The Doors'.

  

  Val Kilmer
  • Songs
  • Doors
  • Sang

• When I was young, I had an 'aha' moment in church. There was a thing called testimony service, and somebody would sing a song, and everyone else would join in, finding a note where they fit. During one of those, a light went on in my head. In that moment, I heard everything - Parliament, the Staple Singers, Curtis Mayfield, Prince - in there.

  

  D'Angelo
  • Song
  • Light
  • Church

• Respect yourself if you would have others respect you.

  

  Baltasar Gracian
  • You
  • Respect
  • Yourself

• The Royal Society view is completely apolitical: it will judge anything based on the evidence. One of the big strengths of the Society is that is it widely perceived as impartial and above the fray. We'd like to make sure it stays that way.

  

  Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
  • Society
  • Judge
  • View

• The best revolutions are unplanned, and the most democratic are leaderless.

  

  Maajid Nawaz
  • Best
  • Most
  • Revolutions

• It is not true that we shall necessarily progress if our political conditions undergo a change, irrespectively of the manner in which it is brought about. If the means employed are impure, the change will not be in the direction of progress but very likely in the opposite.

  

  Mahatma Gandhi
  • True
  • Political
  • Progress

• Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself.

  

  Jack McDevitt
  • Decision

• My older brother took me to Woody Allen double features when I was still teething.

  

  Doug Liman
  • Brother

• I never brought it up when I coached, but I have close ties at Ohio State. Unfortunately, I even have a graduate degree from there.

  

  Bo Schembechler
  • Up

• I think there's been a decline in the public's access to what's being done with their tax dollars, what's being done in their name. I hope that that will be repaired.

  

  Bill Keller
  • Done
  • Hope

• My mother had me when she was 16, and that was an issue that had to be dealt with. She grew up in a very religious background, and there was a lot of discussion of what they should do with this unborn child. But here I am, and thank goodness.

  

  Carmen Cusack
  • Up
  • She
  • Mother

• After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.

  

  Joseph Brodsky
  • Life
  • Work
  • Fake

• A woman's body does a thousand different things, toils, runs, studies, fantasizes, invents, wearies, and meanwhile the breasts enlarge, the lips of the sex swell, the flesh throbs with a round life that is yours, your life, and yet pushes elsewhere, draws away from you although it inhabits your belly, joyful and weighty, felt as a greedy impulse and yet repellent, like an insect's poison injected into a vein.

  

  Elena Ferrante
  • Life
  • Sex
  • Weight