black
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Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.

Cesare Pavese

Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
CESARE PAVESE

Occupation Patient Terrible
Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
CESARE PAVESE

Born Complete Difference Perfection
Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.
CESARE PAVESE

Enjoyment Life Love Pain
We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
CESARE PAVESE

Avoid Freedom Live Ourselves
Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
CESARE PAVESE

Artist Monk State
One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.
CESARE PAVESE

Kill Love Naked Nothing Vulnerable Woman
Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
CESARE PAVESE

Activity Time
Nowadays, suicide is just a way of disappearing. It is carried out timidly, quietly, and falls flat. It is no longer an action, only a submission.
CESARE PAVESE

Action Disappear Fall Quiet Submission Suicide
You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
CESARE PAVESE

Insult Man Refusal Suffering Yourself
I am the captain of my destiny, I do not abandon the ship in hard times, But, I do have sense enough not to go down with the ship.
CESARE PAVESE

Abandonment Captain Destiny Enough Hard Time Myself
A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself.
CESARE PAVESE

Born Love Thinking World
A corpse is what’s left after waking too often.
CESARE PAVESE

Body Death Wake
The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
CESARE PAVESE

Beginning Heart Night Suffering
The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.
CESARE PAVESE

Effort Experience Future Past Skills Technique World Yourself
But all years are stupid. It’s only when they’re over that they become interesting.
CESARE PAVESE

Interest Lost Stupidity Time Wisdom
It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.
CESARE PAVESE

Friendship Grief Herself Loss Stupidity Yourself

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.

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Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.

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Popular Authors

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