Silvia

“Mi ero accorta da tempo che ognuno si organizza la memoria come gli conviene, tuttora mi sorprendo a farlo anch'io”
― Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child

“We consummate life and lose it because in some long-ago time someone, in the desire to unload his cock inside us, was nice, chose us among women. We take for some sort of kindness addressed to us alone the banal desire for sex. We love his desire to fuck, we are so dazzled by it we think it’s the desire to fuck only us, us alone. Oh yes, he who is so special and who has recognized us as special. We give it a name, that desire of the cock, we personalize it, we call it my love.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment

“But I’ve always had a low voice, I can’t yell, the words fall a short distance away like a handful of pebbles thrown by a child.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment

“There remained only rare periods of
amorousness that came over the spouses, but they did not last long.
These were islands that they would land on temporarily, but then they
would put out again to the sea of concealed enmity that expressed itself
in estrangement from each other.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych