Latest Elena Ferrante Quotes from Interviews

• The fictional treatment of biographical material - a treatment that for me is essential - is full of traps.

  Elena Ferrante

  Essentials, Treatment, Traps

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.305, Penguin

• Those who write need that "willing suspension of disbelief ", as Coleridge called it.

  Elena Ferrante

  Writing, Needs, Disbelief

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.305, Penguin

• At most, I may write when I am disturbed by something. I have recently discovered the pleasure of finding written answers to written questions.

  Elena Ferrante

  Writing, Answers, May

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.305, Penguin

• It's the people who love us or hate us - or both - who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.

  Elena Ferrante

  Hate, People, Together

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.305, Penguin

• My work stops at publication. If the books don't contain in themselves their reasons for being - questions and answers - it means I was wrong to have them published.

  Elena Ferrante

  Book, Mean, Questions And Answers

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.305, Penguin

• I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.

  Elena Ferrante

  Thinking, Males, Obstacles

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.304, Penguin

• Competition between women is good only if it does not prevail; that is to say if it coexists with affinity, affection, with a real sense of being mutually indispensable, with sudden peaks of solidarity in spite of envy, jealousy and the whole inevitable cohort of bad feelings.

  Elena Ferrante

  Real, Envy, Feelings

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.304, Penguin

• I no longer protect myself from the world I grew up in. Rather, today I try to protect the feelings I have for that world, the emotional space where my desire to write first took hold, and still grows.

  Elena Ferrante

  Writing, Emotional, Space

  "Elena Ferrante: 'Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing'". Interview with Deborah Orr, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2016.

• Writing for me is a dragnet that carries everything away with it: expressions and figures of speech, postures, feelings, thoughts, troubles. In short, the lives of others.

  Elena Ferrante

  Writing, Expression, Feelings

  "Elena Ferrante: 'Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing'". Interview with Deborah Orr, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2016.

• I had to discover very quickly that class origins cannot be erased, regardless of whether we climb up or down the sociocultural ladder.

  Elena Ferrante

  Class, Ladders, Climbs

  Source: www.theguardian.com

• I don't have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring.

  Elena Ferrante

  Passion, Boss, Special

  "Elena Ferrante: 'Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing'". Interview with Deborah Orr, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2016.

• I have always paid careful attention to social and economic conflicts, to the dialectic - if we can call it that - between high and low. Maybe it's because I was not born or brought up in affluence.

  Elena Ferrante

  Affluence, Attention, Conflict

  "Elena Ferrante: 'Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing'". Interview with Deborah Orr, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2016.

• In order not to cut out a large part of one's private life, the creative work should not swallow up every other form of self-expression. But that is the most complicated thing.

  Elena Ferrante

  Cutting, Self, Expression

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.301, Penguin

• Women, in all fields - whether mothers or not - still encounter an extraordinary number of obstacles. They have to hold too many things together and often sacrifice their aspirations in the name of affections.

  Elena Ferrante

  Mother, Sacrifice, Numbers

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.301, Penguin

• Climbing the economic ladder has been very hard for me; I still feel a great deal of guilt towards those I left behind.

  Elena Ferrante

  Climbing, Guilt, Ladders

  "Elena Ferrante: 'Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing'". Interview with Deborah Orr, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2016.

• Elena Ferrante is the author of several novels. There is nothing mysterious about her, given how she manifests herself - perhaps even too much - in her own writing, the place where her creative life transpires in absolute fullness.

  Elena Ferrante

  Writing, Creative, Too Much

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.301, Penguin

• Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.

  Elena Ferrante

  Writing, Let Me, Anonymity

  Interview with Deborah Orr, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2016.

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