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And to keep under control the anxieties of change I had, finally, taught myself to wait patiently until every emotion imploded and could come out in a tone of calm, my voice held back in my throat so that I would not make a spectacle of myself.
Elena Ferrante -
Without reserve, I can say that my entire identity is in the books I write.
Elena Ferrante
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When I returned home that night with the children, I felt the close, comfortable warmth of the apartment for the first time since the abandonment.
Elena Ferrante -
Reading and writing are closed-room activities, which literally take you away from the gaze of others. The greater risk is that they also remove others from your gaze.
Elena Ferrante -
I didn't choose anonymity.Instead, I chose absence.
Elena Ferrante -
I had the impression that, although I was absorbing much of that sight, many things, too many, were scattering around me without letting me grasp them.
Elena Ferrante -
I hated the idea that he knew everything about me while I knew little or nothing of him. I felt like someone who is blind and knows that he is being observed by the very people he would like to spy on in every detail.
Elena Ferrante -
That is the situation in the factory where I work. The union has never gone in and the workers are nothing but poor victims of blackmail, dependent on the law of the owner, that is: I pay you and so I possess you and I possess your life, your family, and everything that surrounds you, and if you don’t do as I say I’ll ruin you.
Elena Ferrante
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I was so afraid that I thought I was sick. But was I sick? Did I really have a murmur in my heart? No. The only problem has always been the disquiet of my mind. I can’t stop it, I always have to do, redo, cover, uncover, reinforce, and then suddenly undo, break.
Elena Ferrante -
I don’t believe, however, that every fiction we orchestrate is good. I cling to those that are painful, those that arise from a profound crisis of all our illusions. I love unreal things when they show signs of firsthand knowledge of the terror, and hence an awareness that they are unreal, that they will not hold up for long against the collisions. Human beings are extremely violent animals, and the violence they are always ready to use in order to impose their own eternal, salvific life vest, while shattering those of others, is frightening.
Elena Ferrante -
I seemed tranquil but I was extremely agitated, my face hurt with the effort of smiling.
Elena Ferrante -
I tend toward an expansive sentence that has a cold surface and, visible underneath it, a magma of unbearable heat. I want readers to know from the first lines what they will have to deal with.
Elena Ferrante -
Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity.
Elena Ferrante -
I’ve known how to whistle since I was five years old.
Elena Ferrante
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Books are written so their authors can be heard, not so that they remain silent.
Elena Ferrante -
Women, in all fields - whether mothers or not - still encounter an extraordinary number of obstacles. They have to hold too many things together and often sacrifice their aspirations in the name of affections.
Elena Ferrante -
Although she was fragile in appearance, every prohibition lost substance in her presence.
Elena Ferrante -
And there those who knew how to dance danced and those who didn’t learned.
Elena Ferrante -
I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.
Elena Ferrante -
What have I done, she thought, dazed by wine, and what is this gold circle, this glittering zero I’ve stuck my finger in.
Elena Ferrante
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That my cult of study had always seemed to her foolish, that it wasn’t books that made people good but good people who made some good books.
Elena Ferrante -
Every footfall, every voice was Don Achille creeping up behind us or coming down toward us with a long knife, the kind used for slicing open a chicken breast. There was an odor of sautéing garlic. Maria, Don Achille’s wife, would put me in the pan of boiling oil, the children would eat me, he would suck my head the way my father did with mullets.
Elena Ferrante -
Individuals and cities without love are a danger to themselves and to others.
Elena Ferrante -
She claimed that she was in the service of the workers, and yet, from her room in a house full of books and with a view of the sea, she wanted to command you, she wanted to tell you what you should do with your work, she decided for you, she had the solution ready even if you ended up in the street.
Elena Ferrante