Cesare Pavese quotes - page 6

For a long time we had talked of the hill as we might have talked of the sea or the woods. I used to go back there in the evening from the city when it grew dusk, and for me it was not just another place but a point of view, a way of life. For instance, I saw no difference between those hills and these ancient ones where I played as a child and where I live now: the same broken, straggling country, cultivated and wild, the same roads, farmhouses, and ravines. I used to climb up there in the evening as if I too were fleeing the nightly shock of the air-raid alarms. (Cesare Pavese)
Nothing can be added to the rest, to the past. We always begin afresh. One nail drives out another. But four nails make a cross. View quote
Cesare Pavese
The most banal thing, discovered in ourselves, becomes intensely interesting. It is no longer an abstract banality, but an amazing co-ordination between reality and our own individuality. View quote
Cesare Pavese
The really clever thing, in affairs of this sort, is not to win a woman already desired by everyone, but to discover such a prize while she is still unknown. View quote
Cesare Pavese
What use is this valley to a family that comes from across the sea and knows nothing about the moon and the bonfires? You must have grown up there and have in in your bones, like wine and polenta, and then you know it without needing to speak about it and everything you have carried about inside you for so many years without knowing awakens now at the rattle of the chain on a cart, at the swish of an ox' tail, at the taste of a bowl of minestra, at the sound of a voice heard in the square at night. View quote
Cesare Pavese
This much is certain: you can have anything in life except a wife to call you "her man." And till now all your life was based on that hope. View quote
Cesare Pavese
Even then he had those piercing cat's eyes of his and when he had said something, finished up by saying: "If I'm wrong, put me right." And so I began to understand that you didn't speak for the sake of speaking, to say that you had done this or that, what you had eaten or drunk, but to work out an idea, to find out what makes the world go round. View quote
Cesare Pavese
That war in which I had been sheltering, convinced of having accepted it, of having made my own uncomfortable peace, grew more ferocious, bit deeper, reached into one's nerves and brain. View quote
Cesare Pavese
He told me that it isn't what you do but how you do it that shows whether you are clever or not. View quote
Cesare Pavese
One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one's trouble does not make it any better. View quote
Cesare Pavese
I don't believe it can end. Now that I've seen what war is, what civil war is, I know that everybody, if one day it should end, ought to ask himself: "And what shall we make of the fallen? Why are they dead?" I wouldn't know what to say. Not now, at any rate. Nor does it seem to me that the others know. Perhaps only dead know, and only for them is the war really over. (Cesare Pavese)
Here's the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition. View quote
Cesare Pavese
From someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette. View quote
Cesare Pavese
Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next. View quote
Cesare Pavese
We do not remember days, we remember moments. The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten. View quote
Cesare Pavese
The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own-the place where we live-and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves. View quote
Cesare Pavese
He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity. View quote
Cesare Pavese
For some time my friend Doro and I had agreed that I would be his guest. I was very fond of Doro, and when he married and went to Genoa to live, I was half sick over it. When I wrote to refuse his invitation to the wedding, I got a dry and rather haughty note replying that if his money wasn't good for establishing himself in a city that pleased his wife, he didn't know what it was good for. Then, one fine day as I was passing through Genoa I stopped at his house and we made peace. I liked his wife very much, a tomboy type who graciously asked me to call her Clelia and left us alone as much as she should, and when she showed up again in the evening to go out with us, she had become a charming woman whose hand I would have kissed had I been anyone else but myself. View quote
Cesare Pavese
What's got into your head? That I'm returning to my origins? The important things I have in my blood and nobody is going to take them away. I'm here to drink a bottle of my wine and sing a little–with anybody. View quote
Cesare Pavese
See, you're like all the others. But don't you understand that we can't quarrel? We love each other. If I could hate him the way I hate myself, then of course I would abuse him. But neither of us deserves it. See? View quote
Cesare Pavese
All of them, all those idiots who force their brains and don't know when to stop. (Cesare Pavese)
But she didn't laugh. "When you have children," she said, staring at her glass, "you accept life. Do you accept life?" View quote
Cesare Pavese
She didn't seem dead. There was only a swelling of the lips, as if she were angry. The strange thing was her idea of renting a painter's studio, having an armchiar, no less, drawn up s she could die in front of the window that looked toward Superga. A cat had given her away–it was in the room with her, and the next day, miaowing and scratching the door, it had made them open. View quote
Cesare Pavese
We were very young. I don't think I ever slept that year, but I had a friend who slept even less than I did. Some mornings you could see him strolling up and down in front of the station when the first trains were arriving and leaving. View quote
Cesare Pavese
There's nothing that tastes of death more than the summer sun, the powerful light, exuberant nature. You sniff the air and listen to the woods and know that the plants and animals don't give a damn about you. Everything lives and consumes itself. Nature is death... View quote
Cesare Pavese