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We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.

Elena Ferrante

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
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
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

Existence Intense Joy Pain Pleasure Pulse Skin Stab Start Truth Under
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
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
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
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
I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.
ELENA FERRANTE

Constitute Huge Male Obstacle Recount Rich Sexually Think Tradition
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

Being Big Boss Ending never Passion Politics Small Special
I didn’t choose anonymity.Instead, I chose absence.
ELENA FERRANTE

Absence Anonymous Choose Instead
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 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
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
The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she and I, knew how to do it.
ELENA FERRANTE

Do Essential Knowm Play She
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

We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.

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We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.

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Popular Authors

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