407 Quotes by Elena Ferrante

Maybe, I thought, I’ve given too much weight to the cultivated use of reason, to good reading, to well controlled language, to political affiliation; maybe, in the face of abandonment, we are all the same; maybe not even a very orderly mind can endure the discovery of not being loved.

I was so afraid that I thought I was sick. But was I sick? Did I really have a murmur in my heart? No. The only problem has always been the disquiet of my mind. I can’t stop it, I always have to do, redo, cover, uncover, reinforce, and then suddenly undo, break.

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.

As usual it seemed to her that she could enter and leave my life without any worries, as if we were still a single thing and there was no need to ask how are you, how are things, am I disturbing you.

If you don’t try, nothing ever changes.

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

He had rid himself so fiercely of memory, language, the capacity to find meaning that it seemed obvious the hatred he had for himself, for his own skin, for his moods, for his thoughts and words, for the brutal corner of the world that had enveloped him.

My compliance without participation began to disorientate him. I thought, as always in those circumstances, that I should pretend a yearning and uncontrolled passion or push him away. But I didn’t dare to either one or the other: I was afraid I would throw up, because the result would be earthquake-like waves. I had only to wait.

Was it possible? She had taken me with her hoping that as a punishment my parents would not send me to middle school? Or had she brought me back in such a hurry so that I would avoid punishment? Or – I wonder today – did she want at different moments both things?