407 Quotes by Elena Ferrante

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

People died of carelessness, of corruption, of abuse, and yet, in every round of voting, gave their enthusiastic approval to the politicians who made their life unbearable.

What a mistake, above all, it had been to believe that I couldn’t live without him, when for a long time I had not been at all certain that I was alive with him.

Males always have something pathetic about them, at every age. A fragile arrogance, a frightened audacity. I no longer know, today, if they ever aroused in me love or only an affectionate sympathy for their weaknesses.

That connection between anxiety and ugliness unexpectedly consoled me. You can turn ugly because of worries –.

Writing for me is a dragnet that carries everything away with it: expressions and figures of speech, postures, feelings, thoughts, troubles. In short, the lives of others.

I hated the idea that he knew everything about me while I knew little or nothing of him. I felt like someone who is blind and knows that he is being observed by the very people he would like to spy on in every detail.

If she had already yielded, if she had already swallowed that insult, her bond with Stefano must truly be strong. She loved him, she loved him like the girls in the photonovels. For her whole life she would sacrifice to him every quality of her own, and he wouldn’t even be aware of the sacrifice, he would be surrounded by the wealth of feeling, intelligence, imagination that were hers, without knowing what to do with them, he would ruin them.

For example, I came to my exams very well prepared, but if the professor were suddenly to ask me, “Do you know from what works I derive the authority on the basis of which I teach this subject in this university?” I wouldn’t know what to answer. But the others knew. So I moved among them fearful of saying and doing the wrong things.