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Alberto Moravia Quotes

Alberto Moravia was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation and existentialism. Moravia is best known for his debut novel Gli indifferenti and for the anti-fascist novel Il Conformista , the basis for the film The Conformist directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Other novels of his adapted for the cinema are Agostino, filmed with the same title by Mauro Bolognini in 1962; Il disprezzo , filmed by Jean-Luc Godard as Le Mépris ; La Noia , filmed with that title by Damiano Damiani in 1963 and released in the US as The Empty Canvas in 1964 and La ciociara, filmed by Vittorio De Sica as Two Women . Cédric Kahn's L'Ennui is another version of La Noia.

Moravia once remarked that the most important facts of his life had been his illness, a tubercular infection of the bones that confined him to a bed for five years and Fascism, because they both caused him to suffer and do things he otherwise would not have done. "It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will." Moravia was an atheist. His writing was marked by its factual, cold, precise style, often depicting the malaise of the bourgeoisie. It was rooted in the tradition of nineteenth-century narrative, underpinned by high social and cultural awareness. Moravia believed that writers must, if they were to represent reality, "assume a moral position, a clearly conceived political, social, and philosophical attitude" but also that, ultimately, "A writer survives in spite of his beliefs". Between 1959 and 1962 Moravia was president of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers. Wikipedia  

✵ 28. November 1907 – 26. September 1990
Alberto Moravia photo

Works
The Woman of Rome
Alberto Moravia
L'Ennui
Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia: 8   quotes 7   likes

Famous Alberto Moravia Quotes

“When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.”

Alberto Moravia

Quando non si è sinceri bisogna fingere, a forza di fingere si finisce per credere; questo è il principio di ogni fede.
Source: Gli indifferenti (1929; repr. Milano: Corbaccio, 1974) p. 238; Tami Calliope (trans.) The Time of Indifference (South Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth Press, 2000) p. 207.

“And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.”

Alberto Moravia book The Woman of Rome

Source: The Woman of Rome

“You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all.”

Alberto Moravia

Source: Boredom

“An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.”

Alberto Moravia

Un male incerto provoca inquietudine, perché, in fondo, si spera fino all'ultimo che non sia vero; ma un male sicuro, invece, infonde per qualche tempo una squallida tranquillità.
Source: Il Disprezzo (Milano: Bompiani, 1954) p. 77; Angus Davidson (trans.) Contempt (New York: New York Review of Books, 2005) p. 75.

“Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.”

Alberto Moravia

“In the beginning was boredom, commonly called chaos. God, bored with boredom, created the earth, the sky, the waters, the animals, the plants, Adam and Eve; and the latter, bored in their turn in paradise, ate the forbidden fruit. God became bored with them and drove them out of Eden.”

Alberto Moravia book L'Ennui

In principio, dunque, era la noia, volgarmente chiamata caos. Iddio, annoiandosi della noia, creò la terra, il cielo, l'acqua, gli animali, le piante, Adamo ed Èva; i quali ultimi, annoiandosi a loro volta in paradiso, mangiarono il frutto proibito. Iddio si annoiò di loro e li cacciò dall'Eden.
La noia (Milano: Bompiani, 1960) pp. 10-11; Angus Davidson (trans.) Boredom (New York: New York Review of Books, 1999) p. 8.

“Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.”

Alberto Moravia

Interviewed in The New Yorker, May 7, 1955.

“This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.”

Alberto Moravia book The Woman of Rome

Source: The Woman of Rome

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