55 Quotes by Natalia Ginzburg

What we must remember above all in the education of our children is that their love of life should never weaken.

And perhaps even for learning to walk in worn-out shoes, it is as well to have dry, warm feet when we are children.

Vivevano così, in stretta amicizia, dividendosi il poco che avevano, e senza appoggiarsi a nessun gruppo, senza fare progetti per il futuro, perché non c’era nessun futuro possibile; probabilmente sarebbe scoppiata la guerra, e l’avrebbero vinta gli stupidi; perché gli stupidi, Mario diceva, vincevano sempre.

I think we will send you money periodically. Not that money will solve anything, since you’re alone, broke, unsettled, and unreliable. But we’re all unreliable and broken somewhere inside and sometimes it seems desperately attractive to be unrooted and breaking nothing but your own solitude. That’s how people find each other, and understand.

I’ll be patient. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to be patient when it comes to you. With every passing year, one’s store of patience inevitably grows. It’s the only resource that grows. All the others tend to wither.

Ma è vero che a un certo punto della nostra vita i rimorsi li inzuppiamo nel caffè la mattina come biscotti.

They weren’t happy memories because your father and I were never happy together. Even if we had been briefly and occasionally happy, everything got sullied, ripped up, and destroyed. But people don’t love each other only for happy memories. At a certain point in life, you realize that you just love the memories.

It seemed to us that his sadness was that of a boy, the voluptuous heedless melancholy of a boy who has still not come down to earth, and moves in the arid, solitary world of dreams.

It is a country where they know how to build houses. A man's wish to be snug in his own little house, which is just for him and his family, and to have a garden which he cultivates himself, is considered quite reasonable, and so the cities are made up of just such little houses.