peenit

“I think that beauty is a sham.”
“Like the Leopardian garden?”
I didn’t know anything about Leopardian gardens, but I answered, “Yes. Like the sea on a calm day. Or like a sunset. Or like the sky at night. It’s like face powder patted on over the horror. If you take it away, we are left alone with our fear.”
― Elena Ferrante

“I discovered everywhere female automatons created by men. There was nothing of ourselves, and the little there was that rose up in protest immediately became material for their manufacturing.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“What did I care anymore about his political opinions, about Pasquale and Nadia, about the death of Ulrike Meinhof, the birth of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the electoral advances of the Communist Party? The world had retreated. I felt sunk inside myself, inside my flesh, which seemed to me not only the sole dwelling possible but also the only material for which it was worthwhile to struggle. It was a relief when he, the witness to order and disorder, closed the door behind him. I couldn’t bear to be under his gaze, I feared that lips raw from kissing, the night’s weariness, the body hypersensitive, as if burned, all would suddenly become visible.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay

“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 the one who wins.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name