Kimmie

“Become. It was a verb that had always obsessed me...I wanted to become, even though I had never known what. And I had become, that was certain, but without an object, without a real passion, without a determined ambition.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“those who gave me the most pleasure. You know why? Because you’re an idiot, and even to fuck well it takes a little intelligence. For example you don’t know how to give a blow job, you’re hopeless, and it’s pointless to explain it to you, you can’t do it, it’s too obvious that it disgusts you. And he went on like that for a while, making speeches that became increasingly crude; with him vulgarity was normal. Then he wanted to explain clearly how things stood: he was marrying her because of the respect he felt for her father, a skilled pastry maker he was fond of; he was marrying her because one had to have a wife and even children and even an official house. But there should be no mistake: she was nothing to him, he hadn’t put her on a pedestal, she wasn’t the one he loved best, so she had better not be a pain in the ass, believing she had some rights. Brutal words. At a certain point Michele himself must have realized it, and he became gripped by a kind of melancholy. He had murmured that women for him were all games with a few holes for playing in. All. All except one. Lina was the only woman in the world he loved—love, yes, as in the films—and respected. He told me, Gigliola sobbed, that she would have known how to furnish this house. He told me that giving her money to spend, yes, that would be a pleasure. He told me that with her he could have become truly important, in Naples. He said to me: You remember what she did with the wedding photo, you remember how she fixed up the shop? And you, and Pinuccia, and all the others, what the fuck are you, what the fuck do you know how to do? He had said those things to her and not only those. He had told her that he thought about Lila night and day, but not with normal desire, his desire for her didn’t resemble what he knew. In reality he didn’t want her. That is, he didn’t want her the way he generally wanted women, to feel them under him, to turn them over, turn them again, open them up, break them, step on them, and crush them. He didn’t want her in order to have sex and then forget her. He wanted the subtlety of her mind with all its ideas. He wanted her imagination. And he wanted her without ruining her, to make her last. He wanted her not to screw her—that word applied to Lila disturbed him. He wanted to kiss her and caress her. He wanted to be caressed, helped, guided, commanded. He wanted to see how she changed with the passage of time, how she aged. He wanted to talk with her and be helped to talk. You understand? He spoke of her in way that to me, to me—when we are about to get married—he has never spoken.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“You see? In the fairy tales one does as one wants, and in reality one does what one can.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“And the plane began it's takeoff. How exciting it was to lift off from the ground with a jerk and see the houses that became parallelepipettes and the streets that changed into strips and the countryside that was reduced to a green patch and the sea that inclined like a compact paving stone and the clouds that fell below in a landslide of soft rocks and the anguish, the pain, the very happiness that became a part of a unique luminous motion. It seemed to me that flying subjected everything to a process of simplification and I sighed, I tried to lose myself. Every so often I asked Nino "are you happy?" and he nodded yes, kissed me. At times I had the impression that the floor under my feet, the only surface I could count on, was trembling.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay