Writers, because they write, are condemned never to be readers of their own stories...The memory of first putting a story into words will always prevent writers from reading their work as an ordinary reader would.

The fictional treatment of biographical material - a treatment that for me is essential - is full of traps.

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.

Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.

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

There was something unbearable in the things, in the people, in the buildings, in the streets that, only if you reinvented it all, as in a game, became acceptable. The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she and I, knew how to do it.