Alberto Moravia Quotes

• The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

  Alberto Moravia

  Writing, Ratios, Literacy

  Quoted in Observer (London), 14 Oct. 1979

  39 Copy quote

• Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources - and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future.

  Alberto Moravia

  Law, Custodians, Generations

  53 Copy quote

• And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.

  Alberto Moravia

  Love, Glasses, Understanding

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• The less one notices happiness, the greater it is.

  Alberto Moravia

  Greater

  Alberto Moravia (2011). “Contempt”, p.4, New York Review of Books

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• It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.

  Alberto Moravia

  Character, Free Will, Form

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• Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.

  Alberto Moravia

  Motivational, Freedom, Democracies Have

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• When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.

  Alberto Moravia

  Believe, Principles, Needs

  "The Time of Indifference". Book by Alberto Moravia (p. 238), 1929.

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• Because the world to-day is so constructed that no one can do what he would like to do, and he is forced, instead, to do what others wish him to do. Because the question of money always intrudes—into what we do, into what we are, into what we wish to become, into our work, into our highest aspirations, even into our relations with the people we love!

  Alberto Moravia

  People, Wish, World

  Alberto Moravia (2011). “Contempt”, p.170, New York Review of Books

  18 Copy quote

• In life there are no problems, that is, objective and external choices; there is only the life which we do not resolve as a problem but which we live as an experience, whatever the final result may be.

  Alberto Moravia

  Choices, Finals, May

  9 Copy quote

• When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day.

  Alberto Moravia

  Inspiration, Writing, Waiting

  11 Copy quote

• I do not foresee a time when I shall feel that I have nothing to say.

  Alberto Moravia

  Feels

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• An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

  Alberto Moravia

  Heart, Hands, Evil

  Alberto Moravia (2011). “Contempt”, p.75, New York Review of Books

  14 Copy quote

• I don't think it's possible to write a good novel around a negative personality.

  Alberto Moravia

  Writing, Thinking, Personality

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• This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.

  Alberto Moravia

  Men, Alive, Belief

  Alberto Moravia (2011). “The Woman of Rome”, p.202, Steerforth

  10 Copy quote

• ...my boredom might be described as a malady affecting external objects and consisting of a withering process; an almost instantaneous loss of vitality--just as though one saw a flower change in a few seconds from a bud to decay and dust.

  Alberto Moravia

  Flower, Loss, Dust

  Alberto Moravia (2011). “Boredom”, p.5, New York Review of Books

  23 Copy quote

• The novel as we knew it in the nineteenth century was killed off by Proust and Joyce.

  Alberto Moravia

  Proust, Century, Novel

  13 Copy quote

• You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all.

  Alberto Moravia

  Thinking, Purpose

  Alberto Moravia (1961). “The Empty Canvas”, London : Secker & Warburg

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• Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.

  Alberto Moravia

  Perfect, Trying, Problem

  "The New Yorker" Interview, May 7, 1955.

  9 Copy quote

• I like to compare my method with that of painters centuries ago, proceeding from layer to layer.

  Alberto Moravia

  Writing, Layers, Century

  14 Copy quote

• Loyalty, Signor Molteni, not love. Penelope is loyal to Ulysses but we do not know how far she loved him...and as you know people can sometimes be absolutely loyal without loving. In certain cases, in fact, loyalty is form of vengeance, of black-mail, of recovering one's self-respect. Loyalty, not love.

  Alberto Moravia

  Loyalty, Self, People

  Alberto Moravia (2011). “Contempt”, p.93, New York Review of Books

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• Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.

  Alberto Moravia

  Song, Bird, Theme

  6 Copy quote

• War has become an affair of machines...and soldiers are little more than clever mechanics.

  Alberto Moravia

  Clever, War, Soldier

  14 Copy quote

• A writer survives in spite of his beliefs.

  Alberto Moravia

  Belief, Spite

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• Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing—I’m a liar, in fact. That means I’m a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.

  Alberto Moravia

  Real, Liars, Writing

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• Modern man-whether in the womb of the masses, or with his workmates, or with his family, or alone-can never for one moment forget that he is living in a world in which he is a means and whose end is not his business.

  Alberto Moravia

  Mean, Men, World

  4 Copy quote

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