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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.

Elena Ferrante

Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.
ELENA FERRANTE

Anonymity Concentrate Exclusive Let Writing
I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.
ELENA FERRANTE

Author Believe Book Need No Once Written
In order not to cut out a large part of one’s private life, the creative work should not swallow up every other form of self-expression. But that is the most complicated thing.
ELENA FERRANTE

Cut Large Life Once Order Part Private
The fictional treatment of biographical material – a treatment that for me is essential – is full of traps.
ELENA FERRANTE

Biological Fiction Material Treatment
Those who write need that “willing suspension of disbelief “, as Coleridge called it.
ELENA FERRANTE

Call Country Disbelief Need Person Suspension Willing Write
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
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

Been Behind Deal Economics Feel Great Guilt Hard Laddr Left Towards Tumbling
We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.
ELENA FERRANTE

Existence Lie Most Order Ourselves Tolerate
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
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

Both Fragment Hate Love People Thousand Together Us
Writers, because they write, are condemned never to be readers of their own stories…The memory of first putting a story into words will always prevent writers from reading their work as an ordinary reader would.
ELENA FERRANTE

Condemned Own Reader Story Write Writer
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
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
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.
ELENA FERRANTE

Always Attention Careful Conflict Economic Paid Social
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
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

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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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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Popular Authors

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