30
" – La felicità, – lui disse, – sembra sempre niente, è come l’acqua, e si capisce solo quando è perduta.
– È vero, – lei disse. E pensò un poco, e disse:
– E anche il male che noi facciamo, è così, sembra niente, sembra una sciocchezza, acqua fresca, mentre lo facciamo. Se no allora la gente non lo farebbe, starebbe più attenta. "
― Natalia Ginzburg , أصوات المساء
33
" And we leave home and go to live with this person forever; not because we are sure that he is the right person: in fact we are not entirely sure, and we always suspect that the right person for us is hiding away goodness knows where in the city. But we don’t want to know where he is hiding; we feel that we have by now very little to say to him, because we say everything to this person—who is not perhaps the right person—with whom we now live; and we want to receive the good and the evil of our lives from this person and with him. Every now and then violent differences between us and this person erupt into the open; and yet they are unable to destroy the infinite peace we have within us. After many years, only after many years, after a thick web of habits, memories and violent differences has been woven between us, we at last realize that he is, in truth, the right person for us, that we could not have put up with anyone else, that it is only from him that we can ask everything that the heart needs. Now, "
― Natalia Ginzburg , The Little Virtues
39
" And they laughed a little and were very friendly together, the three of them, Anna, Emanuele and Giustino; and they were pleased to be together, the three of them, thinking of all those who were dead, and of the long war and the sorrow and noise and confusion, and of the long, difficult life which they saw in front of them now, full of all the things they did not know how to do. "
― Natalia Ginzburg , All Our Yesterdays