Elena Ferrante Quotes
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When I gave signs of protest she nearly reminded me of the money she was giving me. She stopped in time, but not so that I didn't understand: it was like when someone is about to hit you and then doesn't.
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Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.
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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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...the dreams of the head ended up beneath the feet.
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His wealth, his upbringing, his reputation, well known among the students, as a young militant on the left, his sociability, even his courage when he delivered carefully measured speeches against powerful people within and outside the university—all this had given him an aura that automatically extended to me, as his fiancée or girlfriend or companion, as if the pure and simple fact that he loved me were the public sanctioning of my talents.
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Even if I tried to tell myself that I had given him nothing, that the children were mostly mine, that they had remained within the radius of my body, subject to my care, still I couldn't avoid thinking what aspects of his nature inevitably lay hidden in them. Mario would explode suddenly from inside their bones, now, over the days, over the years, in ways that were more and more visible. How much of him would I be forced to love forever, without even realizing it, simply by virtue of the fact that I loved them? What a complex foamy mixture a couple is. Even if the relationship shatters and ends, it continues to act in secret pathways, it doesn't die, it doesn't want to die.
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Marriage by now seemed to me an institution that, contrary to what one might think, stripped coitus of all humanity.
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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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Languages for me have a secret venom that every so often foams up and for which there is no antidote.
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I’ve known how to whistle since I was five years old.
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As a result of subduing the forces of nature with the tools that we invent, we find ourselves today at the point where the force of our tools has become a greater concern than the forces of nature.
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Women without love lose the light in their eyes, women without love die while they are still alive.
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Only she can say if, in fact, she has managed to insert herself into this extremely long chain of words to modify my text, to purposely supply the missing links, to unhook others without letting it show, to say of me more than I want, more than I’m able to say.
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You can’t leave me here to hope, when in reality you’ve already decided everything.
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We were, in short, on the side of the violation, but only because it reaffirmed the value of the rule.
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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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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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When you haven’t been in the world long, it’s hard to comprehend what disasters are at the origin of a sense of disaster: maybe you don’t even feel the need to.
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I don't have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring.
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She felt that the years she had dedicated to him had been in vain.
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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 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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She was like the full moon when it crouches behind the forest and the branches scribble on its face.
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And so, in spite of his virtues, he was a frivolous, superficial man, an animal organism who dripped sweat and fluids and left behind, like the residue of a careless pleasure, living material conceived, nourished, shaped within female bellies.