dhaifina arifah’s Reviews > Forbidden Notebook > Status Update

I wanted to be alone, to write; and those who want to be enveloped in their own solitude, in a family, always carry in themselves the seed of sin.

“Love takes too much time. Because, in reality, love doesn’t exist. You have to invent it every day, every moment, and then always keep up with your own invention.”

It’s sad to have given so much of oneself to one’s children to reach the conclusion that the only people they don’t trust is us.

Only Michele’s letters are still alive, and yet addressed to a woman who doesn’t resemble me, in whom I don’t recognize myself.

In the suitcase, along with the letters, are some keepsakes of the children that have always stirred an intense emotion. But today the bear Mirella played with when she was a child and Riccardo’s first little shoes seem to me useless objects; they no longer speak to me, they’re nests of dust.

“I studied literature, music, art history. I was taught only what is beautiful and sweet in life. Mirella studies forensic medicine. She knows everything. For me books were a weakness that I had to overcome little by little, over the years; they give her the pitiless force that divides us.”

“At a certain age,” he continued, “everything we’ve done is no longer enough. It was useful only in making us what we are. And just as we are, now that we’re truly ourselves, what we’ve wanted to be or could be, we’d like to start to live again, consciously, according to our current tastes. Instead, we have to continue to live the life we chose when we were someone else.”

“That is what disgusts me, mamma. You think you’re obliged to serve everyone, starting with me. So, little by little, the others end up believing it. You think that for a woman to have some personal satisfaction, besides those of the house and the kitchen, is a fault, that her job is to serve. I don’t want that, you understand? I don’t want that.”

“I’d be happy to know that you enjoy work, too, maybe because then I’d feel less guilty of having burdened your life. You see, excuse my sincerity, but sometimes children feel almost ashamed of having been born, of needing to eat, to have clothes.”

literally will highlight the whole book