It's the people who love us or hate us - or both - who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.

I have always paid careful attention to social and economic conflicts, to the dialectic - if we can call it that - between high and low. Maybe it's because I was not born or brought up in affluence.

My work stops at publication. If the books don't contain in themselves their reasons for being - questions and answers - it means I was wrong to have them published.

Elena Ferrante is the author of several novels. There is nothing mysterious about her, given how she manifests herself - perhaps even too much - in her own writing, the place where her creative life transpires in absolute fullness.

It's the people who love us or hate us - or both - who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.

I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.

Climbing the economic ladder has been very hard for me; I still feel a great deal of guilt towards those I left behind.