Cesare Pavese: Trending quotes (page 3)

“I realised that Nuto was quite right when he said that to live in a hovel or in a palace was one and the same thing, that blood is the same colour everywhere, and that everybody wants to be rich and in love and make their fortune.”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter XXIX, p. 167

Love

“Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Truth

“Men who have a tempestuous inner life and do not seek to give vent to it by talking or writing are simply men who have no tempestuous inner life.
Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Men

“The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Communication , Problem , Loneliness

“The whole plain was like a battlefield—or a farmyard. There was a reddish light and I jumped down, cramped and stiff with cold; a sliver of moon was piercing the low clouds and it looked like a gash from a knife and bathed the plain in a blood-red light. I stayed looking at it for a while. It terrified me.”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter XI, p. 67

Light

“Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there?”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The devil in the hills (1949), Chapter 18, p. 354

“Nuto, who had never really gone away, still wanted to understand the world and change it, and upset the cycle of the seasons. Or perhaps he didn't, and still believed only in the moon. But I, who didn't believe in the moon, knew that when all was said and done only the seasons matter and they are in your bones and they nurtured you when you were a boy.”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter X, p. 60

World , Boy , Understanding , Change

“But she didn't laugh. "When you have children," she said, staring at her glass, "you accept life. Do you accept life?"”

Cesare Pavese

Source: Among women only (1949), Chapter 9, p. 212

Life , Children

“I thought of how many places there are in the world that belong in this way to someone, who has it in his blood beyond anyone else's understanding.”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The devil in the hills (1949), Chapter 9, p. 319

World , Way , Understanding

“There is a reason why I came back to this place—came back here instead of to Canelli, Barbaresco or Alba. It is almost certain that I was not born here; where I was born I don't know. There is not a house or a bit of ground or a handful of dust hereabouts of which I can say: "This was me before I was born."”

Cesare Pavese

Incipit
The moon and the bonfire (1950)

Housing

“Are you or aren't you convinced that weakness is a man's condition? How can you raise yourself if you haven't fallen first?”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The devil in the hills (1949), Chapter 5, p. 306

“It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Pleasure

“We obtain things when we no longer want them.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“But all years are stupid. It's only when they're over that they become interesting.”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The Beach (1941), Chapter 9, p. 48

Stupidity

“In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Effort

“It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Stupidity , Girl , Loss

“Not believing in anything is also a religion.”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The house on the hill (1949), Chapter 15, p. 139

Religion

“Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say; it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Feeling , Home , Sleep , Waiting

“A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

World , Problem , Suffering

“There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Pain , Art , Suffering , Learning