Cesare Pavese Quotes

In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.

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 man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.

Are you or aren't you convinced that weakness is a man's condition? How can you raise yourself if you haven't fallen first?

There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man.

He told me that it isn't what you do but how you do it that shows whether you are clever or not.

A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.

Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.

Don't you know that what happens to you once always happens again? You always react in the same way to the same thing. It's no accident when you make a mess. Then you do it again. It's called destiny.

Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man.

When a woman marries she belongs to another man; and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her.

It's pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone...

Since God could have created a freedom in which there could be no evil (i.e., a state when men were happy and free and certain not to sin), it follows that He wished evil to exist. But evil offends Him. A commonplace case of masochism.

What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence.

Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say; it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live.