407 Quotes by Elena Ferrante

Evidently what in the fiction of the story serves in all innocence to reach the heart of the reader becomes an abomination for one who feels the echo of the facts she has really lived.

I don’t have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring.

Lila is right, one writes not so much to write, one writes to inflict pain on those who wish to inflict pain. The pain of words against the pain of kicks and punches and the instruments of death.

She meant something different: she wanted to vanish; she wanted every one of her cells to disappear, nothing of her ever to be found. And since I know her well, or at least I think I know her, I take it for granted that she has found a way to disappear, to leave not so much as a hair anywhere in this world.

En los cuentos se hace lo que se quiere y en la vida real se hace lo que se puede.

But the happy ending has to do with the tricks of the narrative, not with life, or even love, which is an uncontrollable, changeable feeling, with nasty surprises that are alien to the happy ending.

If she kept him next to her she was afraid of breaking him, if she pushed him too far away she was afraid of losing him.

The hardest things to talk about are the ones we ourselves can’t understand.

How heavy a body that has been traversed by death is, life is light, there’s no need to let anyone make it heavy for us.