Skip to content

Quotes from The Beach — Cesare Pavese

1908–1950 Italy

← All quotes by Cesare Pavese

11 quotes

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

The Beach (1941)

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

The Beach (1941)

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

The Beach (1941)

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

The Beach (1941)

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

The Beach (1941)

What doesn't slumber under the shells of us all? One just needs courage to uncover it and be oneself. Or at least to discuss it. There isn't enough discussion in the world.

The Beach (1941)

Don't mix wine and women, Doro.

The Beach (1941)

We were at the age when a friend's conversation seems like oneself talking, when one shares a life in common the way I still think, bachelor though I am, some married couples are able to live.

The Beach (1941)

I've discovered nothing. but do you remember how much we talked when we were boys? We talked just for the fun of it. We knew very well it was only talk, but still we enjoyed it.

The Beach (1941)

What's got into your head? That I'm returning to my origins? The important things I have in my blood and nobody is going to take them away. I'm here to drink a bottle of my wine and sing a little–with anybody.

The Beach (1941)

See, you're like all the others. But don't you understand that we can't quarrel? We love each other. If I could hate him the way I hate myself, then of course I would abuse him. But neither of us deserves it. See?

The Beach (1941)

Attribution

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