Natalia Ginzburg Quotations

Today, as never before, the fates of men are so intimately linked to one another that a disaster for one is a disaster for everybody.

You aren't ill: it is just that you are made of second-rate materials

When I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along streets that she has known since she was a child, between walls and trees that are hers.

Children should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.

But the English do not know what surprise is. No one ever turns his head to look at anyone else in the street.

I begin to suspect that England is the most melancholy country in the world.

Italy is a country which is willing to submit itself to the worst governments. It is, as we know, a country ruled by disorder, cynicism, incompetence and confusion. Nevertheless we are aware of intelligence circulating in the streets like a vivid bloodstream.

The true defense against wealth is not a fear of wealth - of its fragility and of the vicious consequences that it can bring - the true defense against wealth is an indifference to money.

The English have no imagination: and yet they do show imagination in two things - two only. In the evening-clothes worn by old ladies, and in their cafés.

Being moderate with oneself and generous with others; this is what is meant by having a just relationship with money, by being free as far as money is concerned.

And we are a people without tears. The things that moved our parents do not move us at all.

Over my real sorrows I never weep.

My vocation is to write and I have known this for a long time. I hope I won't be misunderstood; I know nothing about the value of the things I am able to write. I know that writing is my vocation. When I sit down to write I feel extraordinarily at ease, and I move in an element which, it seems to me, I know extraordinarily well; I use tools that are familiar to me and they fit snugly in my hands. But when I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along streets that she has known since she was a child, between walls and trees that are hers.

My tidiness, and my untidiness, are full of regret and remorse and complex feelings.

England is a country where people stay exactly as they are. The soul does not receive the slightest jolt.

But that was the best time of my life, and only now that it has gone from me forever -- only now do I realize it.

Every day silence harvests its victims. Silence is a mortal illness.

I think of a writer as a river: you reflect what passes before you.

We become adolescents when the words that adults exchange with one another become intelligible to us.

As soon as we see our dreams betrayed we realize that the intensest joys of our life have nothing to do with reality, and we are consumed with regret for the time when they glowed within us. And in this succession of hopes and regrets our life slips by.

The course of our lives follows ancient and immutable laws, with an ancient, changeless rhythm. Dreams never come true, and the instant they are shattered, we realize how the greatest joys of life lie beyond the realm of reality. The instant they are shattered we are sick with longing for the days when they flamed within us. Our fate spends itself in this succession of hope and nostalgia.

As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.

No adultery is bloodless.