Luigi

“Eh, amico caro! Come ti esprimi! Vedi quel che faccio io: in valigia é rimasto un posto vuoto e io ci metto del fieno; è così anche nella valigia della nostra vita; la riempio di qualsiasi cosa, pur che non ci sia un posto vuoto.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“Why kid ourselves, people have nothing to say to one another, they all talk about their own troubles and nothing else. Each man for himself, the earth for us all. They try to unload their unhappiness on someone else when making love, they do their damnedest, but it doesn't work, they keep it all, and then they start all over again, trying to find a place for it. "Your pretty, Mademoiselle," they say. And life takes hold of them again until the next time, and then they try the same little gimmick. "You're very pretty, Mademoiselle..."

And in between they boast that they've succeeded in getting rid of their unhappiness, but everyone knows it's not true and they've simply kept it all to themselves. Since at the little game you get uglier and more repulsive as you grow older, you can't hope to hide your unhappiness, your bankruptcy, any longer. In the end your features are marked with that hideous grimace that takes twenty, thrity years or more to climb form your belly to your face. That's all a man is good for, that and no more, a grimace that he takes a whole lifetime to compose. The grimace a man would need to express his true soul without losing any of it is so heavy and complicated that he doesn't always succeed in completing it.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of the Night

“Domani anch'io - l'anima che sente e pensa, l'universo che io sono per me stesso - si, domani anch'io sarò soltanto uno che ha smesso di passare in queste strade, uno che altri evocheranno vagamente con un "che ne sarà stato di lui?". E tutto quanto ora faccio, quanto ora sento e vivo non sarà niente di più che un passante in meno nella quotidianità delle strade di qualsiasi città.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Guardare, ascoltare, leggere, il lavoro non finisce mai.”
― Cees Nooteboom