The Days of Abandonment

by Elena Ferrante

But a favor has to be answered by another favor, and the courtesies became a chain that imprisoned us.

Women without love lose the light in their eyes, women without love die while they are still alive.

At times the solidity of things is entrusted to irritating elements that appear to disrupt their cohesion.

The whole future—I thought—will be that way, life lives together with the damp odor of the land of the dead, attention with inattention, passionate leaps of the heart along with abrupt losses of meaning. But it won’t be worse than the past.

Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.