Marlena De Blasi Quotes

• Living as a couple never means that each gets half. You must take turns at giving more than getting. It’s not the same as a bow to the other whether to dine out rather than in, or which one gets massaged that evening with oil of calendula; there are seasons in the life of a couple that function, I think, a little like a night watch. One stands guard, often for a long time, providing the serenity in which the other can work at something. Usually that something is sinewy and full of spines. One goes inside the dark place while the other one stays outside, holding up the moon.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Couple, Mean, Dark

  47 Copy quote

• Take my hand and grow young with me. Don't rush. Don't sleep. Be a beginner. Light the candles. Keep the fire. Dare to love someone. Tell yourself the truth. Stay inside the rapture.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Sleep, Fire, Light

  Marlena de Blasi (2013). “A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance”, p.63, Algonquin Books

  11 Copy quote

• Sicily could only be an island, less by the caprice of nature than by her own insolence. As though she might have quit Italy had she not already been born separate from it.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Islands, Might, Quitting

  7 Copy quote

• I run down to meet Floriana who is breathless from her hike. She stops in the road, the last light at her back. Prickles of rain cling to her unkerchiefed, loosened hair, capturing in her the flickering russet frame of it. Topaz almonds are her eyes, lit tonight from some new, old place, from some exquisitely secret oubliette, which she must often forget she possesses. We talk for a minute and Barlozzo passes us by like a boy too shy to speak to two girls at once.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Girl, Running, Rain

  9 Copy quote

• There isn't an agony in the world more powerful than tenderness

  Marlena De Blasi

  Powerful, Agony, World

  4 Copy quote

• most crimes are connected to hunger. One hunger or another.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Hunger, Crime, Connected

  Marlena de Blasi (2008). “That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story”, p.66, Ballantine Books

  6 Copy quote

• Some people are born empty. All manner of good deeds and patience and loving kindness can't even begin to fill them up.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Kindness, People, Deeds

  Marlena de Blasi (2008). “That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story”, p.146, Ballantine Books

  6 Copy quote

• We believed the fairy tales we told our children and we loved them beyond reason even when we were green and bungling about it. We were children loving our children. And that's who we are still.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Children, Green, Who We Are

  Marlena de Blasi (2008). “That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story”, p.34, Ballantine Books

  6 Copy quote

• How strange it is, sometimes, which conversations or events stays with us while so much else melts as fast as April snow.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Snow, Events, April

  Marlena de Blasi (2013). “A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance”, p.122, Algonquin Books

  7 Copy quote

• We accumulate pain, collect it. ... We display it, stack it up into a pile, then we stack it up into a mountain, so we can climb up onto it, waiting for or demanding sympathy: "Hey, do you see how big my pain is?"

  Marlena De Blasi

  Pain, Waiting, Feelings

  8 Copy quote

• Much of my crying is for joy and wonder rather than for pain. A trumpet's wailing, a wind's warm breath, the chink of a bell on an errant lamb, the smoke from a candle just spent, first light, twilight, firelight. Everyday beauty. I cry for how life intoxicates. And maybe just a little for how swiftly it runs.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Running, Pain, Twilight

  Marlena de Blasi (2013). “A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance”, p.25, Algonquin Books

  7 Copy quote

• Our babies cried when we left them and we cry when they leave us. Echoes. Proud almost to arrogance then, we pushed them about in their carriages. Dutifully, wearily now they push us about in our chairs.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Baby, Echoes, Arrogance

  4 Copy quote

• We're all who we are endlessly.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Who We Are

  Marlena de Blasi (2008). “That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story”, p.265, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

• Gauntlets are the stuff of every life, but when you learn young how to pick them up, how to work them against the demons, and finally how to outlast if not escape those same demons, life can seem more merciful. It's that long, smooth, false swanning through life that seems to drive a person, sooner or later, into the wall.

  Marlena De Blasi

  Wall, Long, Experience

  Marlena de Blasi (2013). “A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance”, p.34, Algonquin Books

  9 Copy quote

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