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It’s the people who love us or hate us – or both – who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.

Elena Ferrante

Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.
ELENA FERRANTE

Anonymity Concentrate Exclusive Let Writing
Even as I felt myself solidly contained by the expectant looks of my children. It was the fault of the torture that my husband had inflicted. But enough, I had to tear the pain from memory, I had to sandpaper away the scratches that were damaging my brain.
ELENA FERRANTE

Brain Children Contain Damage Fault Husband Memory Scrachees
The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick.
ELENA FERRANTE

First Measure Need Rule Say Stick Story Tell
Certainly something had happened to me during the night. Or after months of tension I had arrived at the edge of some precipice and now I was falling, as in a dream slowly, even as I continued to hold the thermometer in my hand, een as I stood with the soles of my slippers on the floor.
ELENA FERRANTE

Certainly During Happens Night Something
A calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.
ELENA FERRANTE

Between Calculate Calendar Emotion Fact Narrate Pass
My work stops at publication. If the books don’t contain in themselves their reasons for being – questions and answers – it means I was wrong to have them published.
ELENA FERRANTE

Answer Being Book Contain Publication Question Reason Stop Themselves Work
He was going through one of those moments that you read about in books, when a character reacts in an unexpectedly extreme way to the normal discontents of living.
ELENA FERRANTE

Book Character Discontent Extreme Going Living Moment Normal One React Read Through Unexpected Way
Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.
ELENA FERRANTE

Existence Intense Joy Pain Pleasure Pulse Skin Stab Start Truth Under
Writing for me is a dragnet that carries everything away with it: expressions and figures of speech, postures, feelings, thoughts, troubles. In short, the lives of others.
ELENA FERRANTE

Away Carries Dragnet Everything Expression Feeling Figure Posture Speech Through Trouble Write
Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.
ELENA FERRANTE

Even Examination Happy Moment Pleautre Possible Rigorous Stand
The fictional treatment of biographical material – a treatment that for me is essential – is full of traps.
ELENA FERRANTE

Biological Fiction Material Treatment
I no longer protect myself from the world I grew up in. Rather, today I try to protect the feelings I have for that world, the emotional space where my desire to write first took hold, and still grows.
ELENA FERRANTE

Desire Emotional Feeling Grew Longer Myself Protect Rather Space Today Up World
The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she and I, knew how to do it.
ELENA FERRANTE

Do Essential Knowm Play She
I had to discover very quickly that class origins cannot be erased, regardless of whether we climb up or down the sociocultural ladder.
ELENA FERRANTE

Class Climb Down Erase Had Ladder Origin Regardless Sicoverm Quickly Sociocultural
Competition between women is good only if it does not prevail; that is to say if it coexists with affinity, affection, with a real sense of being mutually indispensable, with sudden peaks of solidarity in spite of envy, jealousy and the whole inevitable cohort of bad feelings.
ELENA FERRANTE

Affection Affinity Between Coexist Competition Does Say Good Indispemdible Mutually Only Ral Sense Sudden Women
Those who write need that “willing suspension of disbelief “, as Coleridge called it.
ELENA FERRANTE

Call Country Disbelief Need Person Suspension Willing Write

It’s the people who love us or hate us – or both – who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.

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It’s the people who love us or hate us – or both – who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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