Cesare Pavese Quotes

Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.

In fact a man in love or one consumed with hatred creates symbols for himself, as a superstitious man does, from a passion of conferring uniqueness on things or persons. A man who knows nothing of symbols is one of Dante's sluggards. This is why art mirrors itself in primitive rites or strong passions, seeking for symbols, revolving round the primitive taste for savagery, for what is irrational (blood and sex).

She didn't seem dead. There was only a swelling of the lips, as if she were angry. The strange thing was her idea of renting a painter's studio, having an armchiar, no less, drawn up s she could die in front of the window that looked toward Superga. A cat had given her away–it was in the room with her, and the next day, miaowing and scratching the door, it had made them open.

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

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

It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.

There is something indecent in words.

It wasn't a country where a man could settle down and rest his head and say to the others, "Here I am for good or ill. For good or ill let me leave in peace." This was what was frightening.

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

I was happy enough; I knew that during the night the whole city might go up in flames and all its people be killed, but the ravines, houses, and footpaths would wake in the morning calm and unchanged.

Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.

The whole plain was like a battlefield—or a farmyard. There was a reddish light and I jumped down, cramped and stiff with cold; a sliver of moon was piercing the low clouds and it looked like a gash from a knife and bathed the plain in a blood-red light. I stayed looking at it for a while. It terrified me.

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

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

Here's the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.