Elena Ferrante Quotes
-
Depressed I went out into the heat that lay on the neighborhood like a hand swollen with fever in that season, and made my way to the library.
-
I had to accept myself outside of her.
-
What have I done, she thought, dazed by wine, and what is this gold circle, this glittering zero I’ve stuck my finger in.
-
But her husband was sleeping, he had fallen asleep as if wrapped in a magic cape.
-
If she kept him next to her she was afraid of breaking him, if she pushed him too far away she was afraid of losing him.
-
I seemed tranquil but I was extremely agitated, my face hurt with the effort of smiling.
-
Move on another plane in the name of one's own difference.
-
That even if we're constantly tempted to lower our guard -- out of love, or weariness, or sympathy, or kindness-- we women shouldn't do it. We can lose from one moment to the next everything that we have achieved.
-
Get out of your mind that you can be a woman like me, all you’d succeed in being is what a woman is according to you men. You can copy me, make a portrait as precise as an artist, but my shit will always remain mine, and yours will be yours.
-
I didn't choose anonymity.Instead, I chose absence.
-
Individuals and cities without love are a danger to themselves and to others.
-
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.
-
Although she was fragile in appearance, every prohibition lost substance in her presence.
-
Maturity consisted in accepting the turn that existence had taken without getting too upset.
-
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.
-
No one depended anymore on my care and, finally, even I was no longer a burden to myself.
-
Then she added a sentence I will always remember: “the beauty of mind Cerullo had from childhood never found an outlet, Greco, it has all ended up in her face, in her breasts, in her thighs, in her ass, places where it soon fades and will be as if she never had it.
-
And there those who knew how to dance danced and those who didn’t learned.
-
You’re really a good girl, poor you.
-
Realized that on his lips was a mute laugh that I had never seen before. It became him, the expression of a sympathetic man who wishes to show that he knows what’s what.
-
I would have the small happinesses of the unmarried girl in glasses who spends her life studying: a walk, being taken by the hand.
-
Watch me until I fall asleep. Watch me always even when you leave Naples. That way I'll know that you see me and I'm at peace.
-
I knew - perhaps I hoped - that no form could ever contain Lila, and that sooner or later she would break everything again.
-
We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.