The Story Of The Lost Child Quotes
"Ferrante’s writing is so unencumbered, so natural, and yet so lovely, brazen, and flush."
"Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it."
"Elena Ferrante’s gutsy and compulsively readable new novel, the first of a quartet, is a terrific entry point for Americans unfamiliar with the famously reclusive writer."
"The Neapolitan novels offer one of the more nuanced portraits of feminine friendship in recent memory."
"Ferrante tackles girlhood and friendship with amazing force."
"Ferrante transforms the love, separation and reunion of two poor urban girls into the general tragedy of their city."
"Elena Ferrante: the best angry woman writer ever!"
"Elena Ferrante may be the best contemporary novelist you have never heard of."
"Elena Ferrante is proving that literature can cure our present ills; it can cure the spirit by operating as an antidote to the nervous attempts we make to see ourselves reflected in the present-day of a country that is increasingly repellent."
"My in-laws received me with polite coldness."
"In reality there were entire rooms full of books, old furniture, crystal chandeliers."
"Only the living room was bright: it had a big window that framed a section of light and sea."
"Guido usually took refuge in political talk."
"He usually resorted to when he was suspended between agreement and disagreement."
"Adele had spoken serenely, as if the words had no emotional charge."
"I am Elena Greco and my daughters are my daughters."
"I had the right to invade his life and say to him: Well, my dear, we are here."
"I wanted to find a light-filled house, with a view of the sea."
"I was afraid she would come back and settle in my life; I dictated two more numbers, and got the other numbers wrong on purpose."
"Shut up, you’re the one who’s killing me." - Lila's mother
"I was afraid he would ask me to have an abortion."
"Nothing is in its place, the Ten Commandments have been abolished, women, who can restrain them, it’s all a whorehouse." - Donato
"O.K., go to the market of mothers and buy another one." - Elena
"I don’t believe it anymore, Lenù, you’ve come to a halt." - Elena's mother
"You know that Aunt Lina sleeps with Enzo, but they’re not married?" - Dede
"If only they were all like you, she said: You're made for bringing children into the world."
"The most beautiful thing she did for me was to impose clarity on me."
"If you lose [readers], you lose the chance to publish other books."
"Enough, let’s end the childish aversion to power: one has to be on the inside in the places where things are born and die."
"Nino could justify even the sadistic obtuseness of the employees of the post office."
"He dealt in complex concepts, he knew that this way he would offend me to the point of destroying me."
"I have to talk to him, I have to confront him."
"No, you won’t think about it. You’ve already decided to pretend it was nothing and go on."
"If you have something to tell me," I said, "speak."
"Look at me," she whispered. "I know I’m mean to tell you these things, but he is much worse than I am."
"I haven’t betrayed anyone. My wife—before now—doesn’t exist yet."
"He’s faithful, Antonio said, sarcastically, he never really cuts off relations."
"I can’t I can’t I can’t, the occasional desire, the most foolish, the most obtuse, prevails."
"Before sending me here, Lina forbade me to break the face of that shit."
"All right, I’ll take the apartment above you, I’m coming back to the neighborhood."
"Forget these experiments, Lenù, otherwise you’ll be disappointed and leave again."
"But if the coherence isn’t there, why pretend?"
"You’re very smart," she said to me one evening, "but he has a way of speaking that I truly like."
"You’ve managed to have your whole life here, but not me: I feel I’m in pieces scattered all over."
"It’s clear that the air of Naples has given free rein to your talent."
"Let me explain, it’s essential, it’s urgent."
"I don’t know," he said, "but luckily it happened."
"You’re like everybody else, you’ve betrayed your wife."
"If you don’t want to talk about it, forget it."
"I mean: in an environment like this, with the people you have to deal with, how do you behave?"
"I’m careful and I move things around in order to make them go the way I say."
"Because Lina believes that the two of you are invincible but it’s not true."
"You’re never here, we hardly see each other."
"I’ll take her with me," he muttered. "Ada already has too many troubles."
"It seemed to me like the writing of God as it must have been on Sinai at the time of the Commandments, impalpable and tremendous, but with a concrete effect of purity."
"We have to destroy them, Lenù, and if this isn’t enough I’ll murder them."
"But the conclusion remained the same: with this you won’t ruin them."
"I don’t know. I only know that she feels fatherless and isn’t even sure she has a mother."
"You’ll see, what will happen to the Solaras."
"The real calendar had been replaced by one of contract deadlines, the years leaped from one publication to the next."
"Everything moves. A wish, a fantasy travels more swiftly than blood."
"You’re the daughters of a lady, what are you doing here, persuade your mother to take you away."
"Information that until not long before could be found nowhere was suddenly flooding in."
"They indicated how I and countless other respectable people all over Naples had been within the world of the Solaras."
"The farther we jumped back in horror, the more certain it was that we were behind the line."
"Only a few phrases of his reached me upstairs, filtered through the floor."
"If it was the Solaras who took Tina away from me, then too little was done to them."
"She made an effort to limit herself to contempt."
"Signora Elena Greco, I don’t know if you know her, has the attention of a hippopotamus sleeping in a swamp."
"You think you’re so important, but you’re a whore."
"Here, Mamma, in the eighteenth century it was all countryside."
"But if she disappears, if you no longer know anything about her, there’s not a thing that remains in her place, in your life."
"But look how much damage he was able to do, I underrated him."
"Yes, Imma was consoled but only because Lila was introducing her to a permanent stream of splendors and miseries."
"What was beautiful and solid and radiant was populated with nighttime imaginings, and they both liked stories of shades."
"This city is full of events, both large and small—you can even see spirits if you go to the museum."
"Masaniello is a funny and terrible spirit, he makes the poor laugh and the rich tremble."
"Sometimes you make a mistake, but when as a child you haven’t been taught what the public good is, you don’t understand what a crime is."
"We have to work with consistency, with discipline, step by step, no matter how things are going around us."
"But there’s no need for Papa to be an important person for you to love him."
"You write books but you can’t see the future the way Aunt Lina does."
"What a grave negligence it had been to be born and live in Naples without making an effort to know it."
"Everyone praised the great port, the sea, the ships, the castles, Vesuvius tall and black with its disdainful flames."
"Underneath there’s blood and above, God, peace, prayer, and books."
"You remember how we used words to cause suffering, and how many we invented to humiliate?"
"The entire planet is a big Fosso Carbonario."
"Eliminating herself was a sort of aesthetic project."
"I could no longer believe in the importance of my work."
"All our lives she had told a story of redemption that was hers, using my living body and my existence."