Marlena De Blasi famous quotes

03-28-2025

Living as a couple never means that each gets half. You must take turns at giving more than getting. Itâ€™s not the same as a bow to the other whether to dine out rather than in, or which one gets massaged that evening with oil of calendula; there are seasons in the life of a couple that function, I think, a little like a night watch. One stands guard, often for a long time, providing the serenity in which the other can work at something. Usually that something is sinewy and full of spines. One goes inside the dark place while the other one stays outside, holding up the moon.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Couple #Mean #Dark
Sicily could only be an island, less by the caprice of nature than by her own insolence. As though she might have quit Italy had she not already been born separate from it.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Islands #Might #Quitting
Our babies cried when we left them and we cry when they leave us. Echoes. Proud almost to arrogance then, we pushed them about in their carriages. Dutifully, wearily now they push us about in our chairs.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Baby #Echoes #Arrogance
We believed the fairy tales we told our children and we loved them beyond reason even when we were green and bungling about it. We were children loving our children. And that's who we are still.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Children #Green #Who We Are
most crimes are connected to hunger. One hunger or another.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Hunger #Crime #Connected
Take my hand and grow young with me. Don't rush. Don't sleep. Be a beginner. Light the candles. Keep the fire. Dare to love someone. Tell yourself the truth. Stay inside the rapture.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Sleep #Light #Hands
I run down to meet Floriana who is breathless from her hike. She stops in the road, the last light at her back. Prickles of rain cling to her unkerchiefed, loosened hair, capturing in her the flickering russet frame of it. Topaz almonds are her eyes, lit tonight from some new, old place, from some exquisitely secret oubliette, which she must often forget she possesses. We talk for a minute and Barlozzo passes us by like a boy too shy to speak to two girls at once.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Girl #Running #Rain
We're all who we are endlessly.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Who We Are
There isn't an agony in the world more powerful than tenderness
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Powerful #Agony #World
How strange it is, sometimes, which conversations or events stays with us while so much else melts as fast as April snow.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Snow #Events #April
Much of my crying is for joy and wonder rather than for pain. A trumpet's wailing, a wind's warm breath, the chink of a bell on an errant lamb, the smoke from a candle just spent, first light, twilight, firelight. Everyday beauty. I cry for how life intoxicates. And maybe just a little for how swiftly it runs.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Running #Pain #Twilight
Gauntlets are the stuff of every life, but when you learn young how to pick them up, how to work them against the demons, and finally how to outlast if not escape those same demons, life can seem more merciful. It's that long, smooth, false swanning through life that seems to drive a person, sooner or later, into the wall.
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Wall #Long #Experience
We accumulate pain, collect it. ... We display it, stack it up into a pile, then we stack it up into a mountain, so we can climb up onto it, waiting for or demanding sympathy: "Hey, do you see how big my pain is?"
-- Marlena De Blasi

#Pain #Waiting #Feelings

You may also like:

Alexander Gordon Smith
Author
Alice Steinbach
Journalist
Barbara Cartland
Author
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Journalist
Diane Lane
Actress
E. L. Konigsburg
Writer
Elizabeth George Speare
Writer
Esa Saarinen
Philosopher
Frances Mayes
Poet
Karen Essex
Novelist
Katherine Paterson
Author
Lalita Tademy
Author
Mary Hoffman
Author
Meindert DeJong
Writer
Paula Fox
Writer
Peter Mayle
Author
S. I. Hayakawa
Former United States Senator
Sarah Dunant
Writer
Susan Jane Gilman
Author
Scott O'Dell
Author