Best 23 quotes of Erri De Luca on MyQuotes

I like people who can't die in their bed.

Allora ti piace l’amore?” “ E’ pericoloso. Ci scappano ferite e poi per la giustizia altre ferite. Non è serenata al balcone, somiglia a una mareggiata di libeccio, strapazza il mare sopra, e sotto lo rimescola. Non lo so se mi piace.

A man dies and his skin loses heat like the sand on a summer evening. It makes you feel like warming him up.

Do you really know yourself so well or are you making it up?' she asks. Some things I concoct, some I glean from my senses, most I thirst for.

I can hardly keep track of the things I don't know, but every now and then comes an ignorance that makes me nostalgic.

I grow fond of David, who lays a single stone before Goliath and a single book, the Psalms, in the mouth of the world.

I love you because that piece that remains is worth the whole and I love you by exclusion of the other lost pieces.

Il y a des personnes à qui l'intention ne vaut rien, seul le hasard leur est propice. Le silence conservait à notre rencontre le bénéfice d'un événement fortuit. Il était la complicité requise. Celui qui la dévoile la fait disparaître. Je le sais, je n'ai pas le droit de déduire de telles considérations de si faibles indices [...]

I'm not that man anymore. No one can stay that way too long. That's why wars end and a later generation catches its breath looking forward and erasing what's behind.

I read used books because fingerprint-smudged and dog-eared pages are heavier on the eye. Because every book can belong to many lives. Books should be kept in public places and step out with passersby who'll onto them for a spell. Books should die like people, consumed by aches and pains, infected, drowning off a bridge together with the suicides, poked into a potbellied stove, torn apart by children to make paper boats. They should die of anything, in other words, except boredom, as private property condemned to a life sentence on a shelf.

I see the pain of miserly love in young people,' I say. 'You don't have that kind of melancholy on your face. But I'm careful not to step on your feet when I speak with you. It's not like dancing. It's like a stone walkway with a little grass between the cracks. It's strong but I will try to tread carefully and not ruin it. In Muslim homes you leave your shoes outside. This is how I behave with you.

I take the book stopped at a fold, deliver myself to its pace, to the breathing of the other storyteller. If I am someone else, it's also because books move men more than journeys or tears. After many pages you end up learning a variant, a different move than the one taken and thought inevitable. I break away from what I am when I learn to treat my own life differently.

It's disgusting to kill, Laila. You never get rid of death's grease. It doesn't wash away.

Mi accorgevo del corpo, del suo interno, accanto a lei: del battito del sangue a fior di polso, del rumore dell'aria nel naso, del traffico della macchina cuorepolmoni. Accanto al suo corpo esploravo il mio, calato nell'interno, sbatacchiato come il secchio nel pozzo.

[...] Mots exagérés pour dire qu'il est des réclusions mineures où l'on passe finalement un temps très long avant de s'en libérer. Car c'est bien un acte de volonté subit qui décide du terme et l'on se demande pourquoi on ne s'en est pas délivré plus tôt.

On the brink of sleep I have a gloomy thought: that saving yourself is only pushing yourself even deeper into the trap rather than getting out. Dying is the only way out.

Sometimes to take two steps in a row, one after the other, I need to make a contract with myself.

That's how you keep someone tied to you, not set them free. You say no to a man and don't give him the peace of repayment.

The geometry of the things around us creates coincidences, intersections.

The spoon is a reader's friend, scooping from the plate almost by itself. The fork requires more attention.

This is what books should do: Carry a person and not be carried by him; take the day off his back, not add its own ounces of paper to his vertebrae.

War is when young men dream of being grandfathers.

You stay in the war because it would be shameful to stay out of it. An then grief seizes you and hold its grip till anger has turned you into a soldier.