“ Maybe we really are made of the same clay, maybe we really are condemned, blameless, to the same, identical mediocrity. Elena Ferrante
“ A woman's body does a thousand different things, toils, runs, studies, fantasizes, invents, wearies, and meanwhile the breasts enlarge, the lips of the sex swell, the flesh throbs with a round life th… Elena Ferrante
“ 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… Elena Ferrante
“ She, on the other hand, seized things, truly wanted them, was passionate about them, played for all or nothing, and wasn’t afraid of contempt, mockery, spitting, beatings. Elena Ferrante
“ As a result of subduing the forces of nature with the tools that we invent, we find ourselves today at the point where the force of our tools has become a greater concern than the forces of nature. Elena Ferrante
“ I doubt that work ennobles man and I am absolutely certain that it does not ennoble woman. Elena Ferrante
“ She said that we didn't know anything, either as children or now, that we were therefore not in a position to understand anything, that everything in the neighbourhood, every stone or piece of wood, e… Elena Ferrante
“ Lila was able to speak through writing; unlike me when I wrote, unlike Sarratore in his articles and poems, unlike even many writers I had read and was reading, she expressed herself in sentences that… Elena Ferrante
“ She possessed intelligence and didn't put it to use but, rather, wasted it, like a great lady for whom all the riches of the world are merely a sign of vulgarity. That was the fact that must have begu… Elena Ferrante
“ Maybe I should tell her that things without meaning are the most beautiful ones. It’s a good sentence, she’ll like it. Elena Ferrante
“ You really work in those conditions?”She, irritated by the contact, pulled her arm away, protesting: “And how do you work, the two of you, how do you work?”They didn’t answer. They worked hard, that w… Elena Ferrante
“ I didn’t realize that in his wish to transform me was the proof that he didn’t like me as I was, he wanted me to be different, or, rather, he didn’t want just a woman, he wanted the woman he imagined… Elena Ferrante
“ The solitude of women's minds is regrettable, I said to myself, it's a waste to be separated from each other without procedures, without tradition. Elena Ferrante
“ How quickly people changed, with their interests, their feelings. Well-made phrases replaced by well-made phrases, time is a flow of words coherent only in appearance, the one who piles up the most is… Elena Ferrante
