43 Quotes by Erri De Luca

I see the pain of miserly love in young people,' I say. 'You don't have that kind of melancholy on your face. But I'm careful not to step on your feet when I speak with you. It's not like dancing. It's like a stone walkway with a little grass between the cracks. It's strong but I will try to tread carefully and not ruin it. In Muslim homes you leave your shoes outside. This is how I behave with you.

This is what books should do: Carry a person and not be carried by him; take the day off his back, not add its own ounces of paper to his vertebrae.

When you get homesick, it's not something missing, it's something present, a visit. People and places from far away arrive and keep you company for a while.

I'm not that man anymore. No one can stay that way too long. That's why wars end and a later generation catches its breath looking forward and erasing what's behind.

Le plus souvent notre meilleur côté ne dépend pas de nous, il est confié à l'initiative d'un inconnu qui vient le réveiller par hasard.

I love you because that piece that remains is worth the whole and I love you by exclusion of the other lost pieces.

Sometimes to take two steps in a row, one after the other, I need to make a contract with myself.

You stay in the war because it would be shameful to stay out of it. An then grief seizes you and hold its grip till anger has turned you into a soldier.

War is when young men dream of being grandfathers.