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The fictional treatment of biographical material – a treatment that for me is essential – is full of traps.

Elena Ferrante

I didn’t choose anonymity.Instead, I chose absence.
ELENA FERRANTE

Absence Anonymous Choose Instead
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
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
We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.
ELENA FERRANTE

Existence Lie Most Order Ourselves Tolerate
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 FERRANTE

Answer Discover Disturb Find Most Nay Pleasure Question Recently Something Write Written
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.
ELENA FERRANTE

Queen Spade Sting Wsp
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.
ELENA FERRANTE

Encounter Extraordinary Filed Mother Number Obstacle Women
The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose
ELENA FERRANTE

Around Brutal Circle Empty Neck Night Noose Tighten
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
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
There was something unbearable in the things, in the people, in the buildings, in the streets that, only if you reinvented it all, as in a game, became acceptable.
ELENA FERRANTE

Acceptable Build Game Only People Reinvented Something Street Think Unbearable
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
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
Those who write need that “willing suspension of disbelief “, as Coleridge called it.
ELENA FERRANTE

Call Country Disbelief Need Person Suspension Willing Write

The fictional treatment of biographical material – a treatment that for me is essential – is full of traps.

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The fictional treatment of biographical material – a treatment that for me is essential – is full of traps.

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