Elena Ferrante Quotes
-
Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity.
-
The attentions of Pasquale Peluso consoled me greatly, I liked that he made me laugh. Maybe I’m not so ugly, I thought, maybe I can’t see myself.
-
She went like that saint who, although she still has her head on her shoulders, is carrying it in her hands, as if it had already been cut off.
-
I had always considered sex an ultimate sticky reality, the least mediated contact possible with another body. Instead, after that experience, I was convinced that sex is an extreme product of the imagination. The greater the pleasure, the more the other is only a dream, a nocturnal reaction of belly, breasts, mouth, anus―of every isolated inch of skin―to the caresses and thrusts of a vague entity definable according to the necessities of the moment.
-
Finally, I spoke of the necessity of recounting frankly every human experience, including, I said emphatically, what seems unsayable and what we do not speak of even to ourselves.
-
They were just like the relations from whom I had fled as a girl. I couldn’t bear them and yet they held me tight, I had them all inside me.
-
Nino has something that's eating him inside, like Lila, and it's a gift and a suffering; they aren't content, they never give in, they fear what is happening around them.
-
And the plane began it's takeoff. How exciting it was to lift off from the ground with a jerk and see the houses that became parallelepipettes and the streets that changed into strips and the countryside that was reduced to a green patch and the sea that inclined like a compact paving stone and the clouds that fell below in a landslide of soft rocks and the anguish, the pain, the very happiness that became a part of a unique luminous motion. It seemed to me that flying subjected everything to a process of simplification and I sighed, I tried to lose myself. Every so often I asked Nino "are you happy?" and he nodded yes, kissed me. At times I had the impression that the floor under my feet, the only surface I could count on, was trembling.
-
One becomes affectionate toward men slowly, whether they coincide or not with whomever in the various phases of life we have taken as the model of a man.
-
A book, an article, could make noise, but ancient warriors before the battle also made noise, and if it wasn’t accompanied by real force and immeasurable violence it was only theater.
-
Next to her, in the place where we were born, I was only a decoration, that is, I bore witness to Lila’s merits. Those who had known us from birth attributed to her, to the force of her attraction, the fact that the neighborhood could have on its streets an esteemed person like me.
-
There is this presumption, in those who feel destined for art and above all literature: we act as if we had received an investiture, but in fact no one has invested us with anything, it is we who have authorized ourselves to be authors.
-
“It was the word for a disquiet not otherwise definable, it referred to a miscellaneous crowd of things in her head, debris in a muddy water of the brain. The frantumaglia was mysterious, it provoked mysterious actions, it was the source of all suffering not traceable to a single obvious cause.
-
The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose.
-
Maybe I should tell her that things without a meaning are the most beautiful ones.
-
She became transparent skin over bones, her eyes drowning in violet wells, her hands damp spider webs.
-
I reshuffled the cards that by now we knew well enough. I spoke of the before and the after, of the old generation and of ours, of how we were different, of how she and Stefano were different. And this last argument made a breach, seduced her, I returned to it passionately. She listened to me in silence, evidently she wanted to be helped to compose herself, and slowly she did.
-
We are flying over a ball of fire.
-
Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.
-
You can be hurt only if you love someone. But I don’t love anyone.
-
Why did she talk to me about how soles were ground and not about what she read?
-
You’re really doing well, it’s the satisfaction you get from school, it’s love,” Lila said to me, and I felt that she was a little sad.
-
Nowhere is it written that you can’t do it.
-
The mass of the educated spend their lives commenting lazily on the ideas of others. They engage their best energies in sadistic practices against every possible rival.