Quotes from Elena Ferrante

Why did she talk to me about how soles were ground and not about what she read?

Volví a sacar novelas de la biblioteca circulante, las leía una tras otra. Pero a la larga no me hicieron bien. Proponían vidas intensas, diálogos profundos, un fantasma de la realidad más apasionante que mi vida real. Así, para sentir

When she gave me back the notebook, she said, 'You're very clever, of course they always give you ten.' I felt that there was no irony, it was a real compliment. Then she added with sudden harshness: 'I don't want to read anything else that you write.' 'Why?' She thought about it. 'Because it hurts me,' and she struck her forehead with her hand and burst out laughing.

Disgust at the torments that shackle us, the chains of heavy life.

Two more years: then I'll get my diploma and I'm done.' 'No, don't ever stop: I'll give you the money, you should keep studying.' I gave a nervous laugh, then said, 'Thanks, but at a certain point school is over.' 'Not for you: you're my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls.' She got up, took off her underpants and bra, said, 'Come on, help me, otherwise I'll be late.

La música siempre hace bien, desata los nudos con que los nervios se aferran a las emociones.

The solitude of women's minds is regrettable, I said to myself, it's a waste to be separated from each other without procedures, without tradition.

Che complicato schiumoso miscuglio è una coppia. Sebbene la relazione si sfrangi e poi cessi, essa continua ad agire per vie segrete, non muore, non vuole morire.

When I returned home that night with the children, I felt the close, comfortable warmth of the apartment for the first time since the abandonment

de pequeña sabía que nos moríamos, siempre lo he sabido, pero nunca pensé que fuera a pasarme a mí, y ahora tampoco termino de creérmelo.

Lei insomma s'era meritata Nino perché riteneva che amarlo significasse provare ad averlo, non sperare che lui la volesse.

Especially at night she was afraid of waking up and finding him formless in the bed, transformed into excrescences that burst out because of too much fluid, the flesh melted and dripping, and with it everything around, the furniture, the entire apartment and she herself, his wife, broken, sucked into that stream polluted by living matter.

And they thought that what had happened before was past and, in order to live quietly, they placed a stone on top of it, and so, without knowing it, they continued it, they were immersed in the things of before, and we kept them inside us, too.

en el mundo no había nada que ganar, que su vida estaba llena de aventuras diferentes y desatinadas igual que la mía, y que el tiempo sencillamente se escurre sin

Words for being lost or for being found.

There is this presumption, in those who feel destined for art and above all literature: we act as if we had received an investiture, but in fact no one has invested us with anything, it is we who have authorized ourselves to be authors.

Rino's mother is named Raffaella Cerullo, but everyone has always called her Lina. Not me, I've never used either her first name or her last. To me, for more than sixty years, she's been Lila. If I were to call her Lina or Raffaella, suddenly, like that, she would think our friendship was over.

Bugie, bugie, gli adulti le vietano, intanto ne dicono tante.

I was enchanted. Languages for me have a secret venom that every so often foams up and for which there is no antidote. I remember the dialect on my mother's lips when she lost that gentle cadence and yelled at us, poisoned by her unhappiness: I can't take you anymore, I can't take any more. Commands, shouts, insults, life stretching into her words, as when a frayed nerve is just touched, and the pain scrapes away all self-control.

Il cane se ne era andato attraverso uno strappo nella rete degli eventi. Ne lasciamo tanti, lacerazioni dell'incuria quando mettiamo insieme causa ed effetto. L'essenziale è che la corda, l'intreccio che ora mi reggeva, tenesse.

There were entire libraries separating him and Antonio, but they were similar.

I am clean I am true I am playing with my cards on the table.

reaccionaba explicándome, de hecho, que yo no había ganado nada, que en el mundo no había nada que ganar, que su vida estaba llena de aventuras diferentes y desatinadas igual que la mía, y que el tiempo sencillamente se escurre sin sentido alguno, y que era bonito solo vernos de vez en cuando para oír el sonido loco del cerebro de la una resonando dentro del sonido loco del cerebro de la otra.

So pleasure was this: breaking, mixing, no longer knowing what was mine and what was his.