Conheço muitos homens e muitas mulheres que poderiam narrar experiências não muito diferentes: o amor, o sexo são irracionais e brutais.

The whole future---I thought---will be that way, life lives together with the damp odor of the land of the dead, attention with inattention, passionate leaps of the heart along with abrupt losses of meaning.

...maybe, in the face of abandonment, we are all the same; maybe not even a very orderly mind can endure the discovery of not being loved.

Sebbene Nino non mi desse corda, il solo intravederlo mi teneva la testa per aria durante le lezioni. La sua presenza qualche aula più' in la', vero, vivo, colto più' dei professori e coraggioso e disobbediente, svuotava di senso i discorsi dei miei insegnanti, le righe dei libri, i progetti di matrimonio, la pompa di benzina lungo lo stradone

I have to relearn—I said to myself—the tranquil pace of those who believe they know where they’re going and why.

What a complex foamy mixture a couple is. Even if the relationship shatters and ends, it continues to act in secret pathways, it doesn’t die, it doesn’t want to die.

Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.

It seemed to me - articulated in words of today - that not only did she know how to put things well but she was developing a gift that I was already familiar with: more effectively than she had as a child, she took the facts and in a natural way charged them with tension; she intensified reality as she reduced it to words, she injected with energy. But I also realized, with pleasure, that, as soon as she began to do this, I felt able to do the same, and I tried and it came easily.

Quante parole restano impronunciabili anche all'interno di una coppia che si ama, e com'è elevato il rischio che altri le pronuncino distruggendola.