407 Quotes by Elena Ferrante

I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: it was full of violence. Every sort of thing happened, at home and outside, every day, but I don't recall having ever thought that the life we had there was particularly bad. Life was like that, that's all, we grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for us.

To cause pain was a disease. As a child I imagined tiny, almost invisible animals that arrived in the neighborhood at night, they came from the ponds, from the abandoned train cars beyond the embankment, from the stinking grasses called fetienti, from the frogs, the salamanders, the flies, the rocks, the dust, and entered the water and the food and the air, making our mothers, our grandmothers as angry as starving dogs.

I soon had to admit that what I did by myself couldn't excite me, only what Lila touched became important.

She, on the other hand, seized things, truly wanted them, was passionate about them, played for all or nothing, and wasn’t afraid of contempt, mockery, spitting, beatings.

Conheço muitos homens e muitas mulheres que poderiam narrar experiências não muito diferentes: o amor, o sexo são irracionais e brutais.

We climbed slowly toward the greatest of our terrors of that time, we went to expose ourselves to fear and interrogate it.

The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick, a calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.

Voksne venter på i morgen, bevæger sig i en nutid bag hvilken der er i går eller i forgårs eller højst sidste uge: Resten vil de ikke tænke på. Børn kender ikke betydningen af i går, af i forgårs eller sågar af i morgen, alt er lige nu; gaden er den, døråbningen er den, trapperne er dem, det er mor, det er far, det er dagen, det er natten.

Next to her, in the place where we were born, I was only a decoration, that is, I bore witness to Lila’s merits. Those who had known us from birth attributed to her, to the force of her attraction, the fact that the neighborhood could have on its streets an esteemed person like me.