Troubling Love Quotes

“Childhood is a tissue of lies that endure in the past tense”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“I, too, would find out that old age is a brute, ferocious beast.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“But her body, seated a few inches from mine on the wooden bench, had manifested no unease. Not even her voice, which had been sure and clear: no. Not a single sign that might lead me to think that she was lying. Thus I had no doubt. She was lying.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“I sat on a bench and did what, as a girl, I had done whenever I needed to calm myself: instead of pressing the button with the number 4 on it, I let myself go up to the sixth floor. That space had been empty and dark for many years, ever since the lawyer who had his office there had left, taking with him even the light bulb from the landing. When the elevator stopped, I let my breath glide into my stomach and then return slowly to my throat. As always, after a few seconds, the light in the elevator went out, too. I thought of reaching my hand out to one of the door handles: you had only to pull it and the light would return. But I didn't move and continued to send my breath deep into my body. The only sound was that of the woodworms eating into the panelled walls.

Just a few months earlier (five, six?), on a sudden impulse, I had revealed to my mother, during one of my brief visits, that as an adolescent I used to retreat to that secret place, and I brought her up there, to the top. Maybe I wanted to try to establish an intimacy that there had never been, maybe I wanted to let her know in some confused way that I had always been unhappy. But she seemed to me only amused by the fact that I had sat suspended in the void, in a dilapidated elevator.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Ни одно человеческое существо никогда не будет отторгать меня с теми же болью, тоской и отчаянием, с какими я отторгала маму, не желая иметь с ней ничего общего лишь потому, что мне так и не удалось с ней сродниться.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Words for being lost or for being found.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“It wasn't innocent blood. To my father nothing about Amalia ever seemed innocent. He, so furious, so bitter and yet so eager for pleasure, so irascible and so egotistical, couldn't bear that she had a friendly, at times even joyful, relationship with the world. He recognized in it a trace of betrayal.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“How many things pass through time randomly detached from the bodies and voices of persons. My mother knew the art of making clothes last forever.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“I slept again but only for a few minutes. Then I fell into a torpor crowded with images, in which, without wanting to, I began to tell myself about my mother.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“My compliance without participation began to disorientate him. I thought, as always in those circumstances, that I should pretend a yearning and uncontrolled passion or push him away. But I didn't dare to either one or the other: I was afraid I would throw up, because the result would be earthquake-like waves. I had only to wait.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“In the crush men used the women to play silent games with themselves. One stared ironically at a dark-haired girl to see if she would lower her gaze. One, with his eyes, caught a bit of lace between two buttons of a blouse, or harpooned a strap. Others passed the time looking out the window into cars for a glimpse of an uncovered leg, the play of muscles as a foot pushed break or clutch, a hand absentmindedly scratching the inside of a thigh.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Dire è incatenare tempi e spazi perduti.
Sedetti sull’ultimo gradino, credendo che fosse proprio quello di allora. Mi ripetei a fior di labbra una per una le formule oscene che il padre di Caserta mi aveva snocciolato con crescente agitazione quarant'anni prima. E mi resi conto che, nella sostanza, erano le stesse che mia madre ridacchiando mi aveva gridato per telefono, prima di andarsi ad annegare.
Parole per perdersi o per trovarsi.
Forse voleva comunicarmi che anche lei mi detestava per quello che le avevo fatto quarant'anni prima. Forse a quel modo voleva farmi capire chi era l'uomo che si trovava lì con lei. Forse voleva dirmi di badare a me, di stare attenta alle furie senili di Caserta. O forse voleva semplicemente dimostrarmi che anche quelle parole erano dicibili e che, contrariamente a quanto avevo creduto per tutta la vita, potevano non farmi male.
Mi aggrappai a quell'ultima ipotesi. Ero lì, raggomitolata sulla soglia di tormentate fantasie, per incontrare Caserta e dirgli che non avevo mai voluto nuocergli. Non mi interessava più la storia tra lui e mia madre: desideravo soIo confessare ad alta voce che, allora e dopo, avevo odiato non lui, forse nemmeno mio padre: soltanto Amalia. Era a lei che volevo fare del male. Perché mi aveva lasciata nel mondo a giocare da sola con le parole della menzogna, senza misura, senza verità.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“...the way Amalia, too, perhaps, had for her whole life dreamed of behaving: a woman of the world who bends over without having to place two fingers at the center of her neckline, crosses her legs without worrying about her skirt, laughs coarsely, covers herself with costly objects, her whole body brimming with indiscriminate sexual offerings, ready to joust face to face with men in the arena of the obscene.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Amalia had the unpredictability of a splinter, I couldn’t impose on her the prison of a single adjective.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Yes, it was enough to pull one thread to go on playing with the mysterious figure of my mother, now enriching it, now humiliating it.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“She was always like that,” he said, returning to dialect and growing enraged. “You remember the business of the fruit that came to the house every day? It came out of the blue: she didn’t know how or when. And the book of poetry with the inscription? And the flowers? And the sfogliatelle every day at eight o’clock sharp? And the dress, do you remember that? Is it possible you don’t remember anything? Who bought her that dress, just her size? She said she didn’t know anything about it. But she put it on to go out, secretly, without saying anything to your father. Explain to me why she did that.” I realized that he continued to think that Amalia’s behavior was subtly ambiguous, even when my father had grabbed her by the neck and the livid marks of his fingers remained on her skin. She’d say to us, her daughters: “He’s like that. He doesn’t know what he’s doing and I don’t know what to tell him.” We, on the other hand, thought that our father, because of everything he did to her, should leave the house one morning and be burned to death or crushed or drowned. We thought it and hated her, because she was the linchpin of these thoughts. About this we had no doubts and I had not forgotten it.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“an old photograph of my sisters and me with our father. The photograph was ruined. Those images of us from so long ago were yellowed, cracked, like the figures of winged demons in certain altarpieces that the faithful have defaced with pointed objects.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“The odor was of lunchtime or dinnertime, when, coming from every doorway, the smells of the various dishes mingle in the stairwell but are ruined by a stink of mold and cobwebs.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“But what my less easily verbalized emotions recorded under the word Caserta was a spinning nausea, vertigo, and a lack of air.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“But at the same time I was grateful for the small dose of humiliation and pain he had inflicted on me. I went around the bed, sat on the edge beside him, and masturbated him. He let me do it, with his eyes closed. He ejaculated without a moan, as if he were feeling no pleasure.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“On the other hand I wasn’t really depressed. I felt, rather, as if I had left myself somewhere and was no longer able to find myself: I was worn out, that is, by movements that were too quick and barely coordinated, by the urgency of one who is searching everywhere and has no time to waste.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Por outro lado, não estava realmente deprimida. Sentia-me, em vez disso, como se tivesse sido largada num lugar e não fosse capaz de me reencontrar: angustiada, isto é, com os movimento demasiado rápidos e pouco coordenados, com a pressa de quem procura por todo o lado e não tem tempo a perder.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Byla jsem jediný možný zdroj příběhu, nemohla jsem a ani jsem nechtěla pátrat mimo sebe.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Ano, stačilo zatáhnout za nit, aby si člověk mohl dál hrát se záhadnou postavou mojí mámy, tu ji obohatit, tu ji ponížit. Ale uvědomila jsem si, že už necítím potřebu to dělat, a pohnula jsem se v paprsku světla přesně tak, jak se mi vždycky zdálo, že se pohybuje ona.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Říct znamená spoutat ztracené časy a prostory.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Pojilo nás k sobě jen násilí, jemuž jsme přihlíželi.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Nikoho jsem nehonila a nikdo nehonil mě. Nikdo na mě nečekal a nečekala jsem žádnou návštěvu. Moje sestry navždy odjely. Otec seděl ve starém bytě u malířského stojanu a maloval cikánky. Máma, která už léta existovala jen jako protivný závazek a občas jako utkvělá myšlenka, byla mrtvá. Ale zatímco jsem si rázně drhla obličej, zvlášť kolem očí, uvědomila jsem si s nečekanou něhou, že ve skutečnosti mám Amalii pod kůží, jako teplou tekutinu, kterou mi tam bůhvíkdy vstříkli.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Na druhou stranu jsem v sobě nechtěla nebo nedokázala nechat zakořenit nikoho. Za čas přijdu i o možnost mít děti. Žádná lidská bytost se ode mě neodtrhne s děsem, s nímž jsem se já odtrhla od svojí mámy jen proto, že se mi nikdy nepodařilo se k ní přimknout definitivně.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Teprve několik měsíců předtím (pět, šest?) jsem při jedné ze svých rychlých návštěv z náhlého popudu prozradila mámě, že jsem se na tom tajném místě jako puberťačka schovávala, a táhla jsem ji tam nahoru. Možná jsem mezi námi chtěla vytvořit důvěrný vztah, který jsme spolu nikdy neměly, možná jsem jí chtěla zmateně sdělit, že jsem byla vždycky nešťastná.”
― Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love

“Amalia avait l'imprévisibilité d'une écharde.”
― Elena Ferrante, L'amour harcelant