Kaustav

“We discussed ourselves a lot. But although we were women…we struggled to understand what a woman was. Our every move or thought or conversation or dream, once analyzed in depth, seemed not to belong to us. And this excavation seemed to exasperate those who were weaker, who couldn’t tolerate such an excess of self-reflection and believed that to embark on the road of freedom it was simply enough to cut off men. These were unstable times, arcing in waves. Many of us feared a return to the flat calm and stayed on the crest, holding on to extreme formulations and looking down with fear and rage.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“But when do people ever speak truthfully and when do things ever happen unexpectedly? You know better than me that it's all a fraud and one thing follows another and then another.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“There were things I couldn’t say; I could only write them. Because when I spoke, I thought; and when I wrote, I felt.”
― Benedict Wells, Vom Ende der Einsamkeit

“For her whole life she would sacrifice to him every quality of her own, and he wouldn't even be aware of the sacrifice, he would be surrounded by the wealth of feeling, intelligence, imagination that were hers, without knowing what to do with them, he would ruin them.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name