Those who write need that "willing suspension of disbelief ", as Coleridge called it.

We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.

The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose

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.

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.

Those who write need that "willing suspension of disbelief ", as Coleridge called it.