We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.
ELENA FERRANTEThose who write need that “willing suspension of disbelief “, as Coleridge called it.
More Elena Ferrante Quotes
-
-
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 -
I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.
ELENA FERRANTE -
The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick.
ELENA FERRANTE -
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 -
The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she and I, knew how to do it.
ELENA FERRANTE -
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 -
Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.
ELENA FERRANTE -
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.
ELENA FERRANTE -
A calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.
ELENA FERRANTE -
I didn’t choose anonymity.Instead, I chose absence.
ELENA FERRANTE -
The fictional treatment of biographical material – a treatment that for me is essential – is full of traps.
ELENA FERRANTE -
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 -
Those who write need that “willing suspension of disbelief “, as Coleridge called it.
ELENA FERRANTE -
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 -
Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.
ELENA FERRANTE