The Story of the Lost Child

“Conheço muitos homens e muitas mulheres que poderiam narrar experiências não muito diferentes: o amor, o sexo são irracionais e brutais.”

LoveDesireSex

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“Era così: se eravamo insieme, non c'era critica che ci toccasse davvero, anzi diventavamo superbi, nient'altro aveva senso se non le nostre opinioni. Correvamo a cena, al cibo buono, al vino, al sesso. Volevamo soltanto afferrarci e stringerci.”

WomenFictionNovelFeminismHistorical FictionLiterary FictionItalyCulturalItalian Literature

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“Right after her funeral I felt the way you feel when it suddenly starts raining hard, and you look around and find no place to take shelter.”

GrievingDeath Of A Loved OneGrieving The Loss Of A Mother

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“Next to her, in the place where we were born, I was only a decoration, that is, I bore witness to Lila’s merits. Those who had known us from birth attributed to her, to the force of her attraction, the fact that the neighborhood could have on its streets an esteemed person like me.”

SuccessChildhoodCompeting With Others

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“Should I remain this shadow — my mother, all our female ancestors — or should I let her go?”

Elena Ferrante

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“… if she became distracted real things, which, with their violent, painful contortions, terrified her, would gain the upper hand over the unreal ones, which, with their physical and moral solidity, pacified her; she would be plunged into a sticky, jumbled reality and would never again be able to give sensations clear outlines. A tactile emotion would melt into a visual one, a visual one would melt emotion into an olfactory one, ah, what is the real world, Lenù, nothing, nothing, nothing about which one can say conclusively: it’s like that. And so if she didn’t stay alert, if she didn’t pay attention to the boundaries, the waters would break through, a flood would rise, carrying everything off in clots of menstrual blood, in cancerous polyps, in bits of yellowish fibre.”

Elena Ferrante

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“So what resurrection? It was only cosmetic, a powder of modernity applied randomly, and boastfully, to the corrupt face of the city. It happened like that every time. The scam of rebirth raised hopes and then shattered them, became crust upon ancient crusts.”

Elena Ferrante

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“Aunt Lina said that the spirits existed, but not in the palaces, or in the alleys, or near the ancient gates of the Vasto. They existed in people’s ears, in the eyes when the eyes looked inside and not out, in the voice as soon as it begins to speak, in the head when it thinks, because words are full of ghosts but so are images.”

Elena Ferrante

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“I am still alive — I thought — and yet I can’t feel any different from that big body lying lifeless in that sordid place, in that sordid way.”

Elena Ferrante

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“… there was a great uproar because a young man had just been murdered at the entrance to the library. That made me think that this story would continue forever, recounting now the efforts of children without privileges to improve themselves by getting books from the old shelves, as Lila and I had done as girls, and now the thread of seductive chatter, promises, deceptions, of blood that prevents any true improvement in my city or in the world.”

Elena Ferrante

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“both had always known instinctively that the limbs of a man are not nourished when he fills the belly of another, and that those who would make you believe it should sooner or later get what they deserve.”

Class Warfare

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“Perhaps Lila was right: my book—even though it was having so much success—really was bad, and this was because it was well organized, because it was written with obsessive care, because I hadn’t been able to imitate the disjointed, unaesthetic, illogical, shapeless banality of things.”

WritingRealityChaosExistentialismBanality

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