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Cesare Pavese

133 quotes

“Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We were at the age when a friend's conversation seems like oneself talking, when one shares a life in common the way I still think, bachelor though I am, some married couples are able to live.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't mix wine and women, Doro.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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?”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If all this were true, how easy it would be to understand people.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What doesn't slumber under the shells of us all? One just needs courage to uncover it and be oneself. Or at least to discuss it. There isn't enough discussion in the world.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've discovered nothing. but do you remember how much we talked when we were boys? We talked just for the fun of it. We knew very well it was only talk, but still we enjoyed it.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All of them, all those idiots who force their brains and don't know when to stop.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I started explaining to her that nothing is vulgar in itself but that talking and thinking make it so.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But all years are stupid. It's only when they're over that they become interesting.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was happy enough; I knew that during the night the whole city might go up in flames and all its people be killed, but the ravines, houses, and footpaths would wake in the morning calm and unchanged.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The courage to stand alone as if others didn't exist and think only of what you're doing. Not to get scared if people ignore you. You have to wait for years, have to die. Then after you're dead, if you're lucky, you become somebody.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone...”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is something indecent in words.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not believing in anything is also a religion.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But she didn't laugh. "When you have children," she said, staring at her glass, "you accept life. Do you accept life?”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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...”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't you know that what happens to you once always happens again? You always react in the same way to the same thing. It's no accident when you make a mess. Then you do it again. It's called destiny.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there?”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That you need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. Your own village means that you're not alone, that you know there's something of you in the people and the plants and the soil, that even when you are not there it waits to welcome you.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It wasn't a country where a man could settle down and rest his head and say to the others, "Here I am for good or ill. For good or ill let me leave in peace." This was what was frightening.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The real affliction of old age is remorse.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He told me that it isn't what you do but how you do it that shows whether you are clever or not.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He told them it was only dogs that bark and go for strange dogs, and men set on a dog because it suits them to show that they are still masters, but if the dogs weren't dumb animals they would come to an agreements with each other and start barking at them.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At a certain point the two cigars fell at our feet in the snow and then we heard them whispering up there and moving about and then came a sigh louder than the others. When we looked up we could see nothing but the withered vine leaves and thousands of stars in the frosty sky. Nuto said "The blackguards" through his clenched teeth.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maybe it's better like this, better that everything should go up in a blaze of dry grass and that people should begin again.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People who don't know any better will always be in the dark because the power lies in the hands of men who take good care that ordinary folk don't understand, in the hands, that is, of the government, of the clerical party, of the capitalists.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Consider this point carefully: nowadays, suicide is just a way of disappearing. It is carried out timidly, quietly, and falls flat. It is no longer an action, only a submission.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a man mourns for someone who has played him false, it is not for love of her, but for his own humiliation at not having deserved her trust.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If it is true that one gets used to suffering, how is it that as the years go one always suffers more? No, they are not mad, those people who amuse themselves, enjoy life, travel, make love, fight—they are not mad. We should like to do the same ourselves.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment. When this sensation is lacking—as when one is in prison, or ill, or stupid, or when living has become a habit—one might as well be dead.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source