The Story of the Lost Child (The Neapolitan Novels, #4)

by Elena Ferrante

Where is it written that lives should have a meaning?

Every intense relationship between human beings is full of traps, and if you want it to endure you have to learn to avoid them.

One can’t go on anymore, she said, electronics seems so clean and yet it dirties, dirties tremendously, and it obliges you to leave traces of yourself everywhere as if you were shitting and peeing on yourself continuously: I want to leave nothing, my favorite key is the one that deletes.

Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity.