The fictional treatment of biographical material – a treatment that for me is essential – is full of traps.
ELENA FERRANTEClimbing the economic ladder has been very hard for me; I still feel a great deal of guilt towards those I left behind.
More Elena Ferrante Quotes
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I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.
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At most, I may write when I am disturbed by something. I have recently discovered the pleasure of finding written answers to written questions.
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I didn’t choose anonymity.Instead, I chose absence.
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Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.
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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.
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I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.
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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.
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I had to discover very quickly that class origins cannot be erased, regardless of whether we climb up or down the sociocultural ladder.
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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.
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Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.
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I have always paid careful attention to social and economic conflicts, to the dialectic – if we can call it that – between high and low. Maybe it’s because I was not born or brought up in affluence.
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Women, in all fields – whether mothers or not – still encounter an extraordinary number of obstacles. They have to hold too many things together and often sacrifice their aspirations in the name of affections.
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The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she and I, knew how to do it.
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Climbing the economic ladder has been very hard for me; I still feel a great deal of guilt towards those I left behind.
ELENA FERRANTE -
We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.
ELENA FERRANTE