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The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose

Elena Ferrante

Competition between women is good only if it does not prevail; that is to say if it coexists with affinity, affection, with a real sense of being mutually indispensable, with sudden peaks of solidarity in spite of envy, jealousy and the whole inevitable cohort of bad feelings.
ELENA FERRANTE

Affection Affinity Between Coexist Competition Does Say Good Indispemdible Mutually Only Ral Sense Sudden Women
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.
ELENA FERRANTE

Absolutely Believe Book Certain Depressed Girl Good Hero Man Old Thirteen Year
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
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
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
We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.
ELENA FERRANTE

Existence Lie Most Order Ourselves Tolerate
Those who write need that “willing suspension of disbelief “, as Coleridge called it.
ELENA FERRANTE

Call Country Disbelief Need Person Suspension Willing Write
Writing for me is a dragnet that carries everything away with it: expressions and figures of speech, postures, feelings, thoughts, troubles. In short, the lives of others.
ELENA FERRANTE

Away Carries Dragnet Everything Expression Feeling Figure Posture Speech Through Trouble Write
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
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
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
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
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
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

The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose

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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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