407 Quotes by Elena Ferrante

I observed her, amazed and disappointed, and determined to not be like her, to become truly different and so show her that it was useless and cruel to frighten us with her repeated 'You will never ever ever see me again'; instead she should have changed for real, or left home for real, left us, disappeared. How I suffered for her and for myself, how ashamed I was to have come out of the belly of such an unhappy person.

Don't be timid. You're a writer, use your role, test it, make something of it. These are decisive times, everything is turning upside down. Participate, be present.

I'm not wise, but I read a lot of novels.

Le parole vanno raramente al posto giusto, e solo per un tempo brevissimo. Per il resto servono a parlare a vanvera, come adesso. O a fingere che sia tutto sotto controllo.

I realized in a flash that the memory was already literature and that perhaps Lila was right: my book—even though it was having so much success—really was bad, and this was because it was well organized, because it was written with obsessive care, because I hadn’t been able to imitate the disjointed, unaesthetic, illogical, shapeless banality of things.

I believe that, for those who love to write, time spent writing is never wasted. And then isn't it from book to book that we approach the book that we really want to write?

Maybe we really are made of the same clay, maybe we really are condemned, blameless, to the same, identical mediocrity.

Parole: con quelle si fa e si disfa come si vuole.

Without reserve, I can say that my entire identity is in the books I write.