Cesare Pavese, (1908-1950), Italian Poet, Novelist, Translator Quotes
The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the human interest the old personality can take in new activities.
Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will. All the rest -- thought, action -- is just a pastime, mental or physical. What counts then, is to come to grips with reality. The rest can go.
A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man -- the one he used to be.
Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: "You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.
It is not that the child lives in a world of imagination, but that the child within us survives and starts into life only at rare moments of recollection, which makes us believe, and is it not true, that, as children, we were imaginative?
We do not remember days, we remember moments.
We don't remember days; we remember moments.
Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.
Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.
Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.