Quotes from Elena Ferrante

Fisicamente sei bella" sottolineò Ida, "hai solo un poco di bruttezza dovuta alle preoccupazioni". Angela disse baciandomi: "Succede anche a me: quando mi preoccupo imbruttisco, ma poi passa

Every one of her movements said that to harm her would be pointless because, whatever happened, she would find a way of doing worse to you.

Even as a child, he said, I knew I wasn't what the others thought but not what I thought, either. I said to myself: I'm another thing, a thing hidden in the veins, it has no name and waits.

L'infanzia e' una fabbrica di menzogne che durano all'imperfetto: la mia almeno era stata cosi

To those who hurt me, I react giving back in kind. I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

Literary genres are safe areas, solid platforms. There I can place a pale sketch of a story and practise with calm, wary pleasure. But really I am waiting for my brain to get distracted, to slip up, for other I's — many — outside the margins to join together, take my hand, begin to pull me with the writing where I'm afraid to go, where it hurts me to go, where, if I go too far, I won't necessarily know how to get back.

Sebbene Nino non mi desse corda, il solo intravederlo mi teneva la testa per aria durante le lezioni. La sua presenza qualche aula più' in la', vero, vivo, colto più' dei professori e coraggioso e disobbediente, svuotava di senso i discorsi dei miei insegnanti, le righe dei libri, i progetti di matrimonio, la pompa di benzina lungo lo stradone

Czu?am si? jak postrzelona wariatka, ale podoba?o mi si? to. Jaka? cz??? mnie zm?czy?a si? odgrywaniem osoby rozs?dnej.

For me true writing is that: not an elegant, studied gesture but a convulsive act.

Yes, it was enough to pull one thread to go on playing with the mysterious figure of my mother, now enriching it, now humiliating it.

But at the same time I was grateful for the small dose of humiliation and pain he had inflicted on me. I went around the bed, sat on the edge beside him, and masturbated him. He let me do it, with his eyes closed. He ejaculated without a moan, as if he were feeling no pleasure.

Over time, writing has come to mean giving shape to a permanent balancing and unbalancing of myself, arranging fragments in a frame and waiting to mix them up.

Everything, in writing, has a long history behind it. Even my uprising, my spilling over the margins, my yearning is part of an eruption that came before me and goes beyond me. Thus when I talk about my "I" who writes, I should immediately add that I'm talking about my "I" who has read (even when it's a question of distracted reading, the trickiest kind of reading).

What we were at the beginning is only a vague patch of colour contemplated from the edge of what we have become.

Amalia had the unpredictability of a splinter, I couldn't impose on her the prison of a single adjective.

Accept that to be adult is to disappear, is to learn to hide to the point of vanishing?

When one stops writing one becomes oneself again, the person one usually is, in terms of occupations, thoughts, language. Thus I am now me again, I am here, I go about my ordinary business, I have nothing to do with the book, or, to be exact, I entered it, but I can no longer enter it.

Books are written so their authors can be heard, not so that they remain silent.

As pessoas morriam por incúria, corrupção, opressão e, apesar de tudo, a cada turno eleitoral, dava seu consenso entusiástico aos políticos que tornavam sua vida insuportável.

Bons ou maus, todos os homens acham que, a cada ação deles, você deve colocá-los num altar como um são Jorge matando o dragão.

Há momentos em que recorremos a palavras insensatas e fazemos exigências absurdas para esconder sentimentos lineares.

Cada um conta a própria vida como acha melhor.

Queres bem para toda a vida a pessoas que nunca chegas a saber quem realmente são.

But I felt everything right on top of me, breath against breath. I was tired, tired, tired. I said it loudly but voices die quickly, they seem alive in the bottom of the throat and yet, if articulated, they are already spent sounds.