43 Quotes by Erri De Luca

Do you really know yourself so well or are you making it up?' she asks. Some things I concoct, some I glean from my senses, most I thirst for.

Les lèvres d'une femme m'émeuvent quand elles s'approchent, nues, pour un baiser, elles se déshabillent entièrement, du haut des mots jusqu'en bas.

I grow fond of David, who lays a single stone before Goliath and a single book, the Psalms, in the mouth of the world.

Il y a des personnes à qui l'intention ne vaut rien, seul le hasard leur est propice. Le silence conservait à notre rencontre le bénéfice d'un événement fortuit. Il était la complicité requise. Celui qui la dévoile la fait disparaître. Je le sais, je n'ai pas le droit de déduire de telles considérations de si faibles indices [...]

The spoon is a reader's friend, scooping from the plate almost by itself. The fork requires more attention.

I can hardly keep track of the things I don't know, but every now and then comes an ignorance that makes me nostalgic.

I take the book stopped at a fold, deliver myself to its pace, to the breathing of the other storyteller. If I am someone else, it's also because books move men more than journeys or tears.After many pages you end up learning a variant, a different move than the one taken and thought inevitable.I break away from what I am when I learn to treat my own life differently.

On the brink of sleep I have a gloomy thought: that saving yourself is only pushing yourself even deeper into the trap rather than getting out. Dying is the only way out.

It's disgusting to kill, Laila. You never get rid of death's grease. It doesn't wash away.