“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.”

—  Cesare Pavese

Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter X, p. 56

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Cesare Pavese photo
Cesare Pavese 137
Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator 1908–1950

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