The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante

But I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story, while in fact I am nothing, nothing of my own, nothing that has really begun or really been brought to completion: only a tangled knot, and nobody, not even the one who at this moment is writing, knows if it contains the right thread for a story or is merely a snarled confusion of suffering, without redemption.

In Vittoria’s voice, or perhaps in her whole body, there was an impatience without filters that hit me in a flash, as when, holding a match, I turned on the gas and felt on my hand the flame shooting out of the burner.

But it was a painful sight, I saw myself as a small, faded green plant, debilitated by too much sun, sad. Even though I had made myself up carefully, what an insignificant face I had, the lipstick was an ugly red stain on a face that looked like the gray bottom of a frying pan.

You don’t choose, you realize that without the ugly things the good ones don’t exist, and you act that way because you can’t help it.

the nasty things you don’t say to anyone become dogs that eat your head at night while you’re sleeping.

If the poet takes our banal words and frees them from the bounds of our talk, you see that from within their banality they manifest an unexpected energy. God manifests himself in the same way.”

I went over in my mind, countless times, what he had said, what I had answered, and was ashamed of every word. I heard the frivolity with which I had dismissed complicated questions and in my breast grew a sense of unease very similar to what I’d felt as a child when I did something impulsively that would certainly displease my parents.

But there’s a black veil that can drop at any moment. It’s a sudden blindness, you don’t know how to keep your distance, you crash into things. Does it happen only to some people or to everybody that, once a certain level is passed, they can’t see straight anymore? And was it truer when you saw everything clearly or when the strongest and deepest feelings—hatred, love—blinded you?