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Cesare Pavese Quotes

1908–1950 Italy

Cesare Pavese (9 September, 1908 – 27 August 1950) was an Italian novelist, poet, short-story writer, literary critic and translator.

Italy
Communists
Journalists
Novelists
Poets

Random Cesare Pavese quote

118 quotes

He told me that it isn't what you do but how you do it that shows whether you are clever or not.

The Moon and the Bonfire (1950)

You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.

The Beach (1941)

The real affliction of old age is remorse.

The Moon and the Bonfire (1950)

The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.

This Business of Living (1935)

In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.

This Business of Living (1935)

Maybe it's better like this, better that everything should go up in a blaze of dry grass and that people should begin again.

The Moon and the Bonfire (1950)

A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.

This Business of Living (1935)

Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health.

I started explaining to her that nothing is vulgar in itself but that talking and thinking make it so.

The Beach (1941)

When a woman marries she belongs to another man; and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her.

This Business of Living (1935)

If all this were true, how easy it would be to understand people.

The Beach (1941)

Are you or aren't you convinced that weakness is a man's condition? How can you raise yourself if you haven't fallen first?

The Devil in the Hills (1949)

Not believing in anything is also religion.

All of them, all those idiots who force their brains and don't know when to stop.

The Beach (1941)

Not believing in anything is also a religion.

The House on the Hill (1949)

Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there?

The Devil in the Hills (1949)

But all years are stupid. It's only when they're over that they become interesting.

The Beach (1941)

It's pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone...

The House on the Hill (1949)

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.

This Business of Living (1935)

We care so little of other people that even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Cesare Pavese (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.