Best 18 quotes of Marlena De Blasi on MyQuotes

Marlena De Blasi

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    Marlena De Blasi

    Gauntlets are the stuff of every life, but when you learn young how to pick them up, how to work them against the demons, and finally how to outlast if not escape those same demons, life can seem more merciful. It's that long, smooth, false swanning through life that seems to drive a person, sooner or later, into the wall.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    How strange it is, sometimes, which conversations or events stays with us while so much else melts as fast as April snow.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    I run down to meet Floriana who is breathless from her hike. She stops in the road, the last light at her back. Prickles of rain cling to her unkerchiefed, loosened hair, capturing in her the flickering russet frame of it. Topaz almonds are her eyes, lit tonight from some new, old place, from some exquisitely secret oubliette, which she must often forget she possesses. We talk for a minute and Barlozzo passes us by like a boy too shy to speak to two girls at once.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    Living as a couple never means that each gets half. You must take turns at giving more than getting. It’s not the same as a bow to the other whether to dine out rather than in, or which one gets massaged that evening with oil of calendula; there are seasons in the life of a couple that function, I think, a little like a night watch. One stands guard, often for a long time, providing the serenity in which the other can work at something. Usually that something is sinewy and full of spines. One goes inside the dark place while the other one stays outside, holding up the moon.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    most crimes are connected to hunger. One hunger or another.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    Much of my crying is for joy and wonder rather than for pain. A trumpet's wailing, a wind's warm breath, the chink of a bell on an errant lamb, the smoke from a candle just spent, first light, twilight, firelight. Everyday beauty. I cry for how life intoxicates. And maybe just a little for how swiftly it runs.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    Our babies cried when we left them and we cry when they leave us. Echoes. Proud almost to arrogance then, we pushed them about in their carriages. Dutifully, wearily now they push us about in our chairs.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    Sicily could only be an island, less by the caprice of nature than by her own insolence. As though she might have quit Italy had she not already been born separate from it.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    Some people are born empty. All manner of good deeds and patience and loving kindness can't even begin to fill them up.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    Take my hand and grow young with me. Don't rush. Don't sleep. Be a beginner. Light the candles. Keep the fire. Dare to love someone. Tell yourself the truth. Stay inside the rapture.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    There isn't an agony in the world more powerful than tenderness

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    Marlena De Blasi

    We accumulate pain, collect it. ... We display it, stack it up into a pile, then we stack it up into a mountain, so we can climb up onto it, waiting for or demanding sympathy: "Hey, do you see how big my pain is?

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    Marlena De Blasi

    We believed the fairy tales we told our children and we loved them beyond reason even when we were green and bungling about it. We were children loving our children. And that's who we are still.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    It was Don Paolo's birthday and all the people of the village were gathered in the piazza to celebrate him. The band played, the wine flowed, the children danced, and, as he stood for a moment alone under the pergola, a little girl approached the the beloved priest. "But Don Paolo, are you not happy?" she asked him. "Of course I am happy," he assured the little girl. "Why, then, aren't you crying?

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    Marlena De Blasi

    She's a woman. Like a chameleon does, a woman quietly blends into all the parts of her life. Sometimes you can hardly tell she's there, she's so quiet going on about her business. Feed the baby. Muck the stables. Make soup from stones. Make a sheet into a dress. She doesn't count on destiny for anything. She knows its her own hands, her own arms, her own thighs and breasts that have to do the work. Destiny is bigger in men's lives. Destiny is a welcome guest in a man's house. She barely knocks and he's there to open the door. "Yes, yes. You do it," he says to destiny and lumbers back to his chair.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    Some people ripen, some rot.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    They all know the truth, that there are only three subjects worth talking about. At least here in these parts," he says, "The weather, which, as they're farmers, affects everything else. Dying and birthing, of both people and animals. And what we eat - this last item comprising what we ate the day before and what we're planning to eat tomorrow. And all three of these major subjects encompass, in one way or another, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, the physical sciences, history, art, literature, and religion. We get around to sparring about all that counts in life but we usually do it while we're talking about food, it being a subject inseparable from every other subject. It's the table and the bed that count in life. And everything else we do, we do so we can get back to the table, back to the bed.

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    Marlena De Blasi

    We violate the innocence of things in the name of rationality so we can wander about, uninterrupted, in our search for passion and sentiment.