407 Quotes by Elena Ferrante

I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.

She possessed intelligence and didn’t put it to use but, rather, wasted it, like a great lady for whom all the riches of the world are merely a sign of vulgarity. That was the fact that must have beguiled Nino: the gratuitousness of Lila’s intelligence.

Let’s write one together,” Lila said once, and that filled me with joy.

As long as one writes only for oneself, writing is a free act by means of which, to use an oxymoron, one secretly opens oneself.

I would have the small happinesses of the unmarried girl in glasses who spends her life studying: a walk, being taken by the hand.

Childhood is a tissue of lies that endure in the past tense.

La guardavo dalla finestra, sentivo che la sua forma precedente s’era rotta e ripensavo a quel brano bellissimo della lettera, al rame crepato e accartocciato. Era un’immagine che ormai utilizzavo di continuo, ogni volta che avvertivo una frattura dentro di lei o dentro di me. Sapevo – forse speravo – che nessuna forma avrebbe mai potuto contenere Lila e che presto o tardi avrebbe spaccato tutto un’altra volta.

I slept again but only for a few minutes. Then I fell into a torpor crowded with images, in which, without wanting to, I began to tell myself about my mother.

I cried and cried, as if I had carelessly lost somewhere the most promising part of myself.