Sophie

“Gone was the pleasure of reeducating my voice, my gestures, my way of dressing and walking, as if I were competing for the prize of best disguise, the mask worn so well that it was almost a face. Suddenly I was aware of that almost. Had I made it? Almost. Had I torn myself away from Naples, the neighborhood? Almost. Did I have new friends, male and female, who came from cultured backgrounds…? Almost. From one example to the next, had I become a student who was well received by the solemn professors who questioned me? Almost Behind the almost I seemed to see how things stood. I was afraid. I was afraid as I had been the day I arrived in Pisa. I was scared of anyone who had that culture without the almost, with casual confidence.”
― Elena Ferante, The Story of a New Name

“She often wonders what it must feel like to not feel compelled to perfectly describe a cloud, a sunset, the ocean. To eavesdrop on people in a cafe and not fill in the blanks of their lives with your own imagination.”
― Celia Laskey, Cover Story

“I understood that I had arrived there full of pride and realized that — in good faith, certainly, with affection — I had made that whole journey mainly to show her what she had lost and what I had won. But she had known from the moment I appeared… that I had won nothing, that in the world there is nothing to win, that her life was full of varied and foolish adventures as much as mine, and that time simply slipped away without any meaning, and it was good just to see each other every so often to hear and the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound of the brain of the other. We embraced, we kissed each other. I said I would see her again, I didn’t want to lose her, and I was sincere. She smiled, she said, “Yes, I don’t want to lose you, either.” I felt that she, too, was sincere. I went away in great agitation. Inside was the struggle to leave her, the old conviction that without her nothing truly important would ever happen to me, and yet I felt the need to get away…”
― Elena Ferante, The Story of a New Name

“…something about me jsut have been different, because when I greeted Ada, who was taking her baby out for a walk, she looked at me distractedly, and walked by. Then she stopped, turned back, said, “How well you look, I didn’t recognize you, you’re different.” At the moment I was pleased, but soon I became unhappy. What advantage could I have gained from becoming different? I wanted to remain myself, chained to Lila, to the courtyard, to the lost dolls, to Don Achille, to everything, It was the only was to feel intensely what was happening to me, Yet change is hard to oppose…”
― Elena Ferante, The Story of a New Name