Alberto Moravia Quotes

24 quotes in 441 categories

• When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which…
• Because the world to-day is so constructed that no one can do what he would like to do, and he is forced, instead, to do…
• It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.
• Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.
• In life there are no problems, that is, objective and external choices; there is only the life which we do not resolve as a problem…
• The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.
• War has become an affair of machines...and soldiers are little more than clever mechanics.
• Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by…
• I don't think it's possible to write a good novel around a negative personality.
• I like to compare my method with that of painters centuries ago, proceeding from layer to layer.
• Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of…
• The novel as we knew it in the nineteenth century was killed off by Proust and Joyce.
• Modern man-whether in the womb of the masses, or with his workmates, or with his family, or alone-can never for one moment forget that he…
• A writer survives in spite of his beliefs.
• There are many reasons for keeping a diary: to make a note of facts that one considers important; to open one's heart, to give vent…
• You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all.
• Loyalty, Signor Molteni, not love. Penelope is loyal to Ulysses but we do not know how far she loved him...and as you know people can…
• This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.
• And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.
• ...my boredom might be described as a malady affecting external objects and consisting of a withering process; an almost instantaneous loss of vitality--just as though…

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