Quotes from Elena Ferrante

Maybe it's not all over: even after she's married, something between us will endure.

I didn't intend to say something unkind. I meant only that you are good at making yourself liked. The difference between you and me, always, has been that people are afraid of me and not of you.

But a favor has to be answered by another favor, and the courtesies became a chain that imprisoned us.

We told each other everything, even the little things, and were happy.

You're really a good girl, poor you.

Was it Lila who had persuaded Stefano to behave in a way that was making them the most admired and most talked about couple in the neighborhood? Was this her latest invention? Did she want to leave the neighborhood by staying in the neighborhood? Did she want to drag us out of ourselves, tear off the old skin and put on a new one, suitable for what she was inventing?

I now knew a method of speaking and writing that—by means of a refined vocabulary, stately and thoughtful pacing, a determined arrangement of arguments, and a formal orderliness that wasn't supposed to fail—sought to annihilate the interlocutor to the point where he lost the will to object.

I asked myself what I was doing in that car. They were my friends, of course, my boyfriend was there, we were going to Lila's wedding celebration. But that very celebration confirmed that Lila, the only person I still felt was essential even though our lives had diverged, no longer belonged to us and, without her, every intermediary between me and those youths, that car racing through the streets, was gone.

What happened, in other words, in the world of adults, in the heads of very reasonable people, in their bodies loaded with knowledge? What reduced them to the most untrustworthy animals, worse than reptiles?

La culpa la tiene tu cabeza que no sabe calmarse, busca sin cesar una manera de funcionar

En los cuentos se hace lo que se quiere y en la vida real se hace lo que se puede.

It was predictable, of course, but now that a date had been fixed, March 12th, it was as if I had been strolling absentmindedly and banged into a door.

Ecco Lila festeggiata dal rione, sembrava felice. Sorrideva elegante, cortese, mano nella mano di suo marito. Era bellissima. Su di lei, sulla sua andatura, avevo puntato da piccola, per sfuggire a mia madre. Avevo sbagliato. Lila era rimasta lì, vincolata in modo lampante a quel mondo, dal quale s'immaginava di aver tratto il meglio.

What have I done, she thought, dazed by wine, and what is this gold circle, this glittering zero I've stuck my finger in.

How difficult it is to find one's way , how difficult it is not to violate any of the incredibly detailed male regulations.

the disgusting face of things alone was not enough for writing a novel: without imagination it would seem not a true face but a mask.

When I opened my eyes again, five hours later, at seven o'clock on Saturday August 4th, I had trouble getting my bearings. The hardest day of the ordeal of my abandonment was about to begin, but I didn't know it yet.

I know I`m mean to tell you these things, but he is much worse than I am. He has the worst kind of meanness, that of superficiality.

Se non c'e' amore, non solo inaridisce la vita delle persone, ma anche quella delle citta

Temevo che le accadessero cose, belle o brutte, senza che io fossi presente. Era un timore vecchio, un timore che non mi era mai passato: la paura che, perdendomi pezzi della sua vita, perdesse intensita' e centralita' la mia.

Children don't know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night. I was small and really my doll knew more than I did.

the furies who indulge the happiness of today to feed the violence of tomorrow.

La plebe éramos nosotros. La plebe era ese disputarse la comida y el vino, ese pelearse para que te sirvieran el primero y mejor, ese suelo mugriento por el que los camareros iban y venían, esos brindis cada vez más vulgares...

She became transparent skin over bones, her eyes drowning in violet wells, her hands damp spider webs.