At most, I may write when I am disturbed by something. I have recently discovered the pleasure of finding written answers to written questions.
ELENA FERRANTECertainly 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.
More Elena Ferrante Quotes
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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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Those who write need that “willing suspension of disbelief “, as Coleridge called it.
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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.
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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.
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As a girl – twelve, thirteen years old – I was absolutely certain that a good book had to have a man as its hero, and that depressed me.
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I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.
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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.
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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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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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The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose
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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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Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.
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I didn’t choose anonymity.Instead, I chose absence.
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The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick.
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I don’t have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring.
ELENA FERRANTE