Alberto Moravia Quotes

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

The dark realization came to him that a difficult and miserable age had begun for him, and he couldn't imagine when it would end. [Puberty]

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 sometimes be absolutely loyal without loving. In certain cases, in fact, loyalty is form of vengeance, of black-mail, of recovering one's self-respect. Loyalty, not love.

What was the use of seeing things clearly if the only thing clarity brought was a new and deeper darkness?

I like to compare my method with that of painters centuries ago, proceeding from layer to layer.

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 what others wish him to do. Because the question of money always intrudes - into what we do, into what we are, into what we wish to become, into our work, into our highest aspirations, even into our relations with the people we love!

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 but which we live as an experience, whatever the final result may be.

They say that, if we manage to live without too great an effort, it is entirely owing to the automatism which makes us unconscious of a great part of our movements. In order to take one single step, it seems, we displace an infinite number of muscles, and yet, thanks to this automatism, we are unaware of it. The same thing happens in our relations with other people.

The less one notices happiness, the greater it is.

I do not foresee a time when I shall feel that I have nothing to say.

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 falsifying and fictionalizing - I'm a liar, in fact. That means I'm a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.

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 one saw a flower change in a few seconds from a bud to decay and dust.

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 to one's feelings, to make confessions; from the instinct of economy which sometimes encourages a writer to make good use of even the smallest crumbs of his life, so that he may have one more book to publish; or again from vanity and self- satisfaction.

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 is living in a world in which he is a means and whose end is not his business.

It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.

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 sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day.

Desire for normality; a longing to adapt to some recognized and general rule; a wish to be like everyone else, from the moment that being different meant being guilty.

A writer survives in spite of his beliefs.

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

The novel as we knew it in the nineteenth century was killed off by Proust and Joyce.

You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all.

I gave up the unequal struggle against what appeared to be in my fate, indeed, I welcomed it with more affection. As one embraces a foe one can't defeat and I felt liberated.

When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.

... the mystery of all things, from the greatest to the least: everything can be explained, except their existence.