Tardella Sapienza Quotes

All of the fucking in "The Art of Joy" could put it in a class with "Story of O" or "The Sexual Life of Catherine M." But Sapienza's novel is about sex only insofar as an account of a woman's artistic, intellectual, and political maturation must include her sexual career. Or, better, the discovery of pleasure initiates Modesta's appetite more generally - for knowledge, for experience, for autonomy. It turns her outward, toward nonsexual things, by inwardly sustaining her. Her childish sadism is less sexual than it is basically libidinal: her erotic interest in her sister's or St. Agatha's pain, or the way in which her hatred of Leonora transmutes into arousal - these are signs of an exultant urge to live. "The real way of living is to answer to one's wants," D. H. Lawrence says in a letter (written, incidentally, from Italy). "I want that liberty, I want that woman, I want that pound of peaches, I want to go to sleep, I want to go to the pub and have a good time, I want to look abeastly swell today, I want to kiss that girl, I want to insult that man. ~ Disobedience Is A Virtue On Goliarda Sapienza S The Art Of Joy The New Yorker

That's how the past came back... not with the same characters, like in novels, but with new ones that trigger the memory of fears that haven't been expunged. And that was very dangerous. I mustn't try to forget the past, as I had thought[...]; instead I should remember it all, so I could keep it under control and use it to strengthen myself against the new experiences that surely lay in wait. ~ Goliarda Sapienza

The tightrope of love swings back and forth, forever tied between the tree of anxiety and the tree of fear. Like life, it holds a constant reminder that death must be overcome ... ~ Goliarda Sapienza

Surprise is the enemy of prudence. ~ Goliarda Sapienza

Never refuse to see the unpleasant aspects of life; by remaining unseen, they are actually magnified in the imagination, transformed into irrepressible demons. ~ Goliarda Sapienza