Elena Ferrante Quotes
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Maturity consisted in accepting the turn that existence had taken without getting too upset.
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Finally he had decided that he had to free Lila, even if at that moment, perhaps, she had no desire to be freed. But—he had said to himself—it takes time for people to understand what’s good and what’s bad, and helping them means doing for them what in a particular moment of their life they aren’t capable of doing.
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We don't know anything about people, even those with whom we share everything.
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She was struggling to find, from inside the cage in which she was enclosed, a way of being all her own, that was still obscure to her.
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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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You’re really a good girl, poor you.
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I would have the small happinesses of the unmarried girl in glasses who spends her life studying: a walk, being taken by the hand.
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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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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.
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But her husband was sleeping, he had fallen asleep as if wrapped in a magic cape.
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Soon she’ll start yelling, I thought, soon she’ll hit her, trying to break that bond. Instead, the bond will become more twisted, will strengthen in remorse, in the humiliation of having shown herself in public to be an unaffectionate mother, not the mother of church or the Sunday supplements.
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No one depended anymore on my care and, finally, even I was no longer a burden to myself.
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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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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.
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In the wealthier countries a mediocrity that hides the horrors of the rest of the world has prevailed. When those horrors release a violence that reaches into our cities and our habits we’re startled, we’re alarmed.
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I seemed tranquil but I was extremely agitated, my face hurt with the effort of smiling.
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And there those who knew how to dance danced and those who didn’t learned.
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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.
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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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Individuals and cities without love are a danger to themselves and to others.
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Although she was fragile in appearance, every prohibition lost substance in her presence.
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I knew - perhaps I hoped - that no form could ever contain Lila, and that sooner or later she would break everything again.
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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.
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Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.