Lies and Sorcery Quotes

“With the first sharp prick of love I felt for someone I knew, an endless landscape of lovesickness would open up before me and extend all the way to the abyss of death.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“imagination and memory perhaps mere instruments of illusion, tricking humans into believing they have a past behind them and a future before them.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“As for you, my little anchovy, you must eat a lot of bread and a lot of pasta before you can become a beautiful woman like me!”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“But,” he added, “don’t have any illusions that by marrying me you will be happy. After we’re married, I’ll wander off as I please, visit whomever I like, attend parties, and travel around the world. But you will have to wait for me, shut up at home. Before I leave, I will glue strips of paper around the windows and doors and write my signature on them to assure myself when I return that not only did you stay inside, but you didn’t even look out the window. In our house, we shall only employ female servants, and if for some reason I must hire male servants, I will choose men who are so monstrously ugly that if you happen to look at them you will turn away in horror. I also don’t want you to remain beautiful because your beauty will then be my cross to bear. A wife shouldn’t be beautiful. She should be a saint and nothing else. Until you are old, you will continuously be pregnant or breastfeeding, and after only a few years you’ll become fat, shapeless, and exhausted, no longer able to arouse the temptation of any man. I, on the other hand, will remain slim, the same weight as I am now, six months shy of nineteen years old, and I shall roam and soar about the world secure that you’re waiting for me at home. I will have lovers, but my one true love will be you. Do not think that when you are fat and old that I will love you less. On the contrary, I will love you more because every time I look at you I will know that it was I who made you, the girl who was beauty itself, so ugly. That ugliness will be more mine than your beauty could ever be, and for this reason I will remain madly in love with you. The scar on your cheek pleases me more than your hair, more than your eyes, because those things were given to you by your mother, and the scar, instead, was given to you by me.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“Attraverso i suoi molti peccati, Teodoro non ismentí mai, però, il suo carattere precipuo: una generosità avventata e cavalleresca, la quale, malgrado la sua frivolezza in amore, gli meritava il perdono e, in certi casi, fin la gratitudine, delle sue stesse vittime. Con grandiosità senza pari, egli si spendeva tutto intero in ogni avventura, anche nelle piú effimere: se amava una donna, foss’anche per un sol giorno, per la durata di questo giorno era il suo schiavo, ed era capace di commettere ogni sorta di vistose e costose follie per una fiamma passeggera ed esigua. Inoltre, egli possedeva il dono delle parole, e, di piú, il dono di credere in esse: grazie al magico uso d’un vocabolario poetico, romanzesco, e, badate bene, sincero, egli trasmutava, nel concetto suo proprio e in quello delle credule amanti, una comune tresca in una tragedia. E nessuna delle sue amanti (qualsiasi fossero stati le amarezze e gli strazi inflittile, per crudeltà della sorte, da Teodoro), alla fine, almeno, non rimaneva senza l’estrema soddisfazione d’aver vissuto, non già una mediocre avventura, ma un’esperienza magnifica, e d’aver rappresentato una parte sublime.
A Teodoro non piaceva di lasciare alcuno con la bocca amara: e ciò non solo a motivo della sua naturale mitezza, ma anche perché l’ideale amoroso, sul quale egli avrebbe voluto modellarsi, non era di perfidia, ma di cortesia e magnanimità. Egli preferiva di rappresentare dopotutto, e a dispetto, magari, d’ogni verisimiglianza, la parte della vittima; e vi riusciva con tanto successo che si dette il caso d’amanti da lui tradite, disonorate e abbandonate che s’impietosirono meno sulla propria sorte che sulla sua.”
― Elsa Morante, Menzogna e sortilegio

“In humans of Edoardo's ilk, who flee from the rest as if it were a kind of death, we can, I believe, recognize the citizens of Earthly Paradise who are not yet used to their exile. Mortal life, enclosed between time and space, is a prison for those who are continuously agitated by troublesome illusions, perhaps specifically by the illusion that they will find the lands where they originally roamed free. It might be said that what has been passed down to these people from the fruit tasted by Adam was just condemnation, and not knowledge. The freedom to which these people aspire is only found in Eden, the other, truer paradises denied them. And their restlessness reminds one of certain uneasy and pathetic beasts, who having been taken from the forest and put in cages, relentlessly run between one set of bars and another. Their lost liberty pursues them and their destiny as beasts denies them Adam's holy redemption.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“Anna didn't tend to talk much, but every so often she would become frantically loquacious. Her conversation would have something of the make-believe about it, as if she were an actress chattering away on stage but was secretly exhausted and wanted nothing more than to return to reality and be alone. If Francesco even touched on the subject of money or employment, Anna's face immediately darkened and she retreated into silence. Francesco had been forced to tell her upfront that he owned no castle or country estate. Yes, he'd stammered, he was of baronial origins, but his family had fallen into ruin and had almost nothing left. At this revelation, Anna had shown neither regret nor surprise as if this was something she'd known all along or was of little interest to her. A hard, slightly ironic expression appeared on her face. "But of course, of course," she said impatiently, and lowering her eyes, she began to fiddle with her spoon.They both were silent while the last sunlight streaming the dirty caffè window faded and the room darkened. But then suddenly, as he turned towards Anna, Francesco noticed that her pouting mouth was trembling and that her eyes, which she raised for an instant, were moist and bright. Perhaps she really did harbor a hope that those imaginary holdings of his were real? Or perhaps she was thinking of something else entirely? Francesco was so mortified and unsure of himself that he didn't dare ask her anything. The silence between them grew longer and Anna raised her now dry, wide eyes and remained stiffly in her seat in the corner of the half-empty coffee shop without looking at her companion again. She was so stern and detached that one might have mistaken her for a foreigner passing through, seated all alone at that little table in the caffè. Sitting beside her, Francesco, deeply disappointed that he wasn't privy to her most intimate thoughts, let his gaze wander over the small iron tables, across the streaked marble countertop, to the brazier no longer stoked by the lazy shop boy, its few remaining sparks dying among the ashes. Even without catching his fiancée's eye, he could see her dark eyes glowing in the twilight like those of a visionary fixated on her inner thoughts. This was how they spent their brief and acrimonious engagement.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“But to become a devotee and disciple of deception! To fix your every thought and all your knowledge on lies!”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“Like a contemplative monk, I kept company with my books and myself.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“Cesira’s repressed desire caused her, on occasion, to lose all restraint. “Whatever it takes!” she told herself. And if a gentleman passed by alone in a carriage, his mustache lustrous and well-curled, she flashed him the brazen look of a courtesan. Disoriented and astonished by the curious invitation, he turned to observe the overdressed woman holding the hand of a beautiful child. If one of these gentlemen found himself attracted by her and responded with a smile or a nod, or even ordered his carriage to stop, Cesira was seized by terror and lowered her eyes, picked up her pace, and without glancing further at either the carriages or the passersby, she fled towards home.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“Embittered by her fate, she was a stern and snappish teacher, both feared and despised by her pupils.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“All of this gave rise to a suspicion that instead of a beloved bride, the Letter Writer wanted a kind of priestess whose only job was to worship her husband’s many special attributes. And to lure his victim, he corrupted her by enticing her with the gold, gems, and other precious splendors Anna couldn’t resist.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“I have praised this tone, so unique to the women of our region, on other occasions; in it one could hear the echo of motherhood throughout the ages mingled with the mournful lament of a prisoner’s anthem.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“With the judgment of an adult, I know I should condemn that tyrant and ruthlessly call her damning epithets, but all is in vain. In vain, my judgment dictates that I should call her a stupid, perverse, and vulgar woman, but my judgment, alas, is powerless since even today my emotions bathe her image in a divine aura. The bad mother, the killjoy, the wicked wife, I can only see her through my childish eyes. I see her resplendent in her embroidered stole, wearing her precious stones, as noble and as beautiful as Our Lady of the Orient. Her evil thoughts shine around her head like a halo and the vile and inhuman desires that pierce it appear to me as holy swords.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“At the age of six, I was baptized in the convent’s tiny chapel. Though they had consented to the ceremony, my parents refused to attend. And so accompanied by a stranger, a kind woman who offered to be my godmother for the occasion, never to be seen again, I became one of the faithful. Instructed by the nuns as to the meaning of baptism, I remember feeling extraordinarily emotional when I received the sacrament, overcome by joy combined with desperation and fear. The ritual seemed to be a kind of mystical tragedy: in the exact moment that I was washed of original sin, I became like an angel forever separated from my mother, who dwelled with the reprobates, heathen women, and Jews.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“There, like animals lying in hibernation, my memories shake themselves awake when I call out to them and they move towards me with velvety, solemn steps, staring at me with their treacherous, meek eyes in which are written denial and remorse. No help, no remedy, other than sorrowful sleep.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“This did not impede Francesco from buying extravagances to give our poor rooms some grandeur. Later, as a child, I saw these gaudy objects as elegant and extraordinary—the youthful imagination, like wine or opium, can dress up anything with “fabulous elegance” and “miraculous luxury.” I don’t know in which secondhand shop or garbage dump these items wound up, but they shine in my memory fully intact and in the same places where I, as a child, saw them every day.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“she quoted local proverbs such as this one: “Tears shed for a woman are like the water in the sea / not good to drink from, but good to drown in.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“Displayed on top of a chest of drawers were several wedding gifts received twenty-five years earlier by Francesco’s parents: an engraved wooden box; an open case containing six crystal glasses, each in its own faded velvet-lined niche; a collection of small plaster figurines; and other such objects. The only use for these things was to be shown off, and they never moved from their place on the dresser except to be delicately cleaned and dusted. Gathered in what could be described as an altar, the great value of these precious things had been impressed on Francesco from a very young age, so that the objects would not fall victim to the violence of his curious little hands. And so acquiring, because inviolable, increased power and mystery, these nuptial gifts inhabited his childhood like people of a strange and noble lineage.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“We know how proud Edoardo was of his family name and status. It seemed to him, and to those like him, that fate itself, having placed him in a privileged class, wanted to show that he considered him better than others, almost as if he had been produced from the rarest of ores. Although his instinct to dominate often led him to love those lower than himself, he never had the intention or even the thought of elevating the person he loved to his own rank. In the same way that the gods, when they wanted to marry humans, had to descend to earth in their human forms, or as animals or clouds, but they never elevated their earthly lovers to enjoy the privileges of Olympus. In Edoardo’s case, he received an overabundance of pleasure from his sense of social superiority. But instead of thinking he might abolish this difference between him and Anna, to the contrary, he yearned for Anna to mentally absorb her lowliness, so that he could see that proud person submissive and quivering before him. To achieve this goal, he continued to invent cruel tricks to play on her.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“Occasionally, one would see respectable and elegant tourists on the city’s streets being led by a tiny ragamuffin hunched beneath a pile of genteel luggage, filling the roles of both porter and emissary at once.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“Teodoro knew how to glorify his rebellion while simultaneously solemnizing his own degradation and, like animals who lick the blood of their own wounds, he tasted the flavor of his own squalor.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“And as sometimes happens after a life of dissipation and self-indulgence, his sentimentalism left him gullible and easily duped.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“Undeniably, the scant little woman munching her water-soaked bread seemed to live off pure spite.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“Such is the source of the story I am about to tell you. It is not about illustrious people, but rather about a wretched middle-class family. However, as far-fetched as the story may at times seem to you, it is true start to finish.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“I was now in possession of the last and most important bequest left to me by my parents—lies—which they had transmitted to me like a disease. Truly, the example of their disastrous lives, so troubling when I was a child, should have worked to immunize me from this hereditary ailment. They had, in fact, shown me the inhuman, solitary fate reserved for those who refused to accept the role assigned to them in this life, inventing instead a script full of lies, choosing to believe pretense was real life. Those who succumb to make-believe are like madmen who go to the theater and are terrified by the tragedy they see onstage. They scream when they see the leading lady tormented and want to rush on stage to kill the tyrant causing her distress. But at least the poor madman has the excuse of not being aware of the fiction that is theater, and he certainly had nothing to do with staging the lie. But others, like my parents, fully believe the disguises they don are genuine, and they worship them, thereby rejecting their own lives on earth and, indeed, in heaven, since the only way to get there is to take part in real life.”
― Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

“La cattiva matrona, la guastafeste, la perfida moglie, io non posso vederla che coi miei occhi di bambina: eccola, rifulgente nella sua stola ricamata, nelle sue pietre preziose, nobile e bella come una Nostra Signora orientale. I suoi cattivi pensieri le splendono intorno al capo come un’aureola; e i desideri turpi e disumani che la trafiggono mi paiono spade sante.”
― Elsa Morante, Menzogna e sortilegio