Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (The Neapolitan Novels, #3)

by Elena Ferrante

And this is how I see it today: it’s not the neighborhood that’s sick, it’s not Naples, it’s the entire earth, it’s the universe, or universes. And shrewdness means hiding and hiding from oneself the true state of things.

Even though I had known him forever, he was made of dreams, and holding on to him forever would have been impossible: