Quotes from Dacia Maraini

A writer is first and foremost a witness of her time. She must tell the truth, not take a political position. But then the truth that she discovers is profoundly political.

Friendship is a form of love. In fact, you don't know how it starts or why. It is subject to the caprices of time. It can grow or die without a reason. It can last a lifetime.

One writes what one lives, even if not in a literal way. Someone who has gone through an unhappy love tends to describe unhappy loves, even if they have nothing to do with their own.

Falling in love with a story is like falling in love with a person. It tends to occupy your life, your thoughts. You can't do anything else for a long time.

Above all else she mustn't think that using her body will help her attain her goal. Men use women who play seductively, and then they look down on them.

Her gaze dims as her nostalgia for Palermo overcomes her. Those smells of seaweed dried by the sun, of capers, of ripe figs, she will never find them anywhere else; those burnt and scented shores, those waves slowly breaking, jasmine petals flaking in the sun.

Caro bambino, mi viene da scrivere. Ma forse no, caro giovanotto. Sei morto così giovane. [...] Sinceramente preferisco pensarti bambino, prima del tradimento, dell'odio e dell'assassinio. Preferisco pensarti taciturno e gentile, in quella capanna riscaldata dal fiato della mucca e dell'asino, per niente disturbato dalla povertà del tuo giaciglio di paglia, fra ranocchini che saltano, il rumore della pioggia sul tetto abbozzato alla meglio da tuo padre e le gonne sudice di tua madre.

I'd bite myself and take out my feelings with my teeth.

Is it not an aberration of the memory to love only what it has lost? Just why do we lose these things, only to languish with nostalgia for the same places and the same people that earlier bored us to extinction? Is not all this predictable, vulgar folly?

Ha sempre sospettato che la signora madre, in un lontano passato in cui era giovanissima e immaginosa, ha scelto di farsi morta per non dovere morire. Da lì deve venire quella sua speciale capacità di accettare ogni noia col massimo della condiscendenza e il minimo dello sforzo.

To leave a book is like leaving the better part of oneself. To pass from the soft and airy arcades of the mind to the demands of a graceless body always grasping for one thing or another is in any case a surrender:

It is your disability that makes you unique, deprived of the privileges that you are nevertheless entitled to through your birthright, outside the stereotypes of your social position, in spite of it being part of your very flesh.

This wish to wander, to meet different kinds of people, is there something arrogant about it, something a little frivolous and perverse? Where will she go to make a home for herself when every home seems too sunk in its roots, too predictable

She would like to be able to carry her home on her back like a snail and go off into the unknown.

From his ancestors he had inherited the idea that love is predatory: to take aim, to assault, to lacerate, to devour – then to go away satisfied, leaving behind a carcass, a skin, empty of life.

This fish soup,' says Hans, dipping his spoon into it. 'It's really good, you must tell me how you make it.' 'Put some garlic in a pan with a little oil and parsley, and as soon as it turns golden, slip in the fish, cleaned and cut up but complete with the heads which are the tastiest part, then pour on boiling water and let it cook for a long time. Then...' But Hans won't let him finish. The recipe immediately bores him.

Sapete, alle volte è l'amore degli altri che ci innamora: vediamo una persona solo quando essa chiede i nostri occhi.

Marianna has always suspected that her lady mother, in the far-off past, when she was very young and full of imagination, deliberately chose to become lifeless so that she would never have to die.

The meal will consist of macaroni di zitu, red mullet, hare in a sour sauce, boar with chocolate, turkey stuffed with ricotta, fish cooked in wine, roast suckling pig, sweet rice, conserve of scorzonera, ice-cream, sweetmeats, almond biscuits, water ices and wines from Casa Ucrìa with the strong pungent flavour of the grapes from Torre Scannatura.

Conosceva tutti i pettegolezzi del paese, ma non era maligna, anzi cercava di rimediare a tutte le gelosie, a tutte le invidie, mettendo una mezza parola di qua, una allusione benevola di la'. Sempre disposta a vedere il bene nascosto tra i mali come un fico maturo e succoso in mezzo alle pale spinose e impolverate della convivenza quotidiana.

For Duke Pietro the history of the family, however full of myth and fantasy, is more real than the tales told by the priests.

The future is created through memory.