Elena Ferrante Quotes
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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.
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It's hard to explain why, but that regret made me suffer. It seemed to be the sign of a true interest in Lila, something much stronger than the compliments for my discipline as a constant reader. It occurred to me that if Lila had taken out just a single book a year, on that book she would have left her imprint and the teacher would have felt it the moment she returned it, which I left no mark, I embodied only the persistence with which I added volume to volume in no particular order.
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We grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for us.
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To write, you have to want something to survive you. I don’t even have the desire to live, I’ve never had it strongly the way you have. If I could eliminate myself now, while we’re speaking, I’d be more than happy. Imagine if I’m going to start writing.
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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 abandonmen.
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But her husband was sleeping, he had fallen asleep as if wrapped in a magic cape.
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She felt that the years she had dedicated to him had been in vain.
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I'm lying, yes, but why do you force me to give a linear explanation; linear explanations are almost always lies.
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It was good just to see each other every so often to hear the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound of the brain of the other.
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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.
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In conversations with my daughters I hear omitted words or phrases. Sometimes they get mad, they say Mama, I never said that, you’re saying it, you invented it. But I invent nothing; you just have to listen—the unspoken says more than the spoken.
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And yet now that we were seventeen the substance of time itself no longer seemed fluid but had assumed a gluelike consistency and churned around us like a yellow cream in a confectioner's machine.
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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.
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I am therefore Italian, completely and with pride. But if I could, I would descend into all languages and let myself be permeated by them all. Even the terrible Google Translate consoles me. We can be much more than what we happen to be.
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Books are written so their authors can be heard, not so that they remain silent.
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I had to accept myself outside of her.
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Had it really been so wonderful? I knew very well that at that time, too, there had been shame. And uneasiness, and humiliation, and disgust: accept, submit, force yourself. Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.
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You’re really a good girl, poor you.
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Although she was fragile in appearance, every prohibition lost substance in her presence.
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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.
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I’ve known how to whistle since I was five years old.
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The girl, perhaps without even realizing it, and who knows for how long, had been assessing the power of her swaying body, her restless eyes, on my husband; and he looked at her as one looks from a gray area at a white wall struck by the sun.
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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.
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I seemed tranquil but I was extremely agitated, my face hurt with the effort of smiling.