81
" Otišla sam iz rajona, vratila se u njega, uspjela ponovo otići. ništa, ništa me nije povuklo na dno skupa s djevojkama koje sam rodila. Spasile smo se, sve sam ih spasila. Oh, one sad pripadaju drugim mjestima i drugim jezicima. Italiju smatraju predivnim kutkom Zemlje, a ujedno i beznačajnom i uzaludnom provincijom u kojoj je moguće živjeti samo tijekom kratkog odmora. Dede mi često govori: odi odavde, dođi živjeti sa mnom, i odande možeš obavljati svoj posao. Ja kažem hoću, prije ili poslije učinit ću to. Ponosne su na mene, a svejedno znam da me nijedna od njih ne bi dugo trpjela, sada više ni Imma. Svijet se nekim čudom promijenio i sve više pripada njima, sve manje meni. "
― Elena Ferrante , The Story of the Lost Child (The Neapolitan Novels #4)
84
" On the screen luminous tremors appeared. Lila began to type on the keyboard, I was speechless. It was in no way comparable to a typewriter, even an electric one. With her fingertips she caressed gray keys, and the writing appeared silently on the screen, green like newly sprouted grass. What was in her head, attached to who knows what cortex of the brain, seemed to pour out miraculously and fix itself on the void of the screen. It was power that, although passing for act, remained power, an electrochemical stimulus that was instantly transformed into light. It seemed to me like the writing of God as it must have been on Sinai at the time of the Commandments, impalpable and tremendous, but with a concrete effect of purity. Magnificent, I said. I'll teach you, she said. And she taught me, and dazzling, hypnotic segments began to lengthen, sentences that I said, sentences that she said, our volatile discussions were imprinted on the dark well of the screen like wakes without foam. "
― Elena Ferrante , The Story of the Lost Child (The Neapolitan Novels #4)
87
" Tem a ver, sempre e apenas, com nós duas: ela que quer que eu dê aquilo que a sua natureza e as circunstâncias a impediram de dar, e eu que não consigo dar aquilo que ela pretende; ela que se irrita com a minha insuficiência, e por represália me quer reduzir a nada, como fez consigo mesma, e eu que passei meses e meses e meses a escrever, para lhe dar uma forma que não perca os contornos, e lhe bater, e a acalmar, e assim por minha vez me acalmar. "
― Elena Ferrante , The Story of the Lost Child (The Neapolitan Novels #4)
88
" Eh, she said once, what a fuss for a name: famous or not, it’s only a ribbon tied around a sack randomly filled with blood, flesh, words, shit, and petty thoughts. She mocked me at length on that point: I untie the ribbon—Elena Greco—and the sack stays there, it functions just the same, haphazardly, of course, without virtues or vices, until it breaks. "
― Elena Ferrante , The Story of the Lost Child (The Neapolitan Novels #4)
89
" Now that I was surrounded by admiration, I could admit without uneasiness that talking to her incited ideas, pushed me to make connections between distant things. In those years of being neighbors, I on the floor above, she below, it often happened. A slight push was enough and the seemingly empty mind discovered that it was full and lively. I attributed to her a sort of farsightedness, as I had all our lives, and I found nothing wrong with it. I said to myself that to be adult was to recognize that I needed her impulses. If once I had hidden, even from myself, that spark she induced in me, now I was proud of it, I had even written about it somewhere. I was I and for that very reason I could make space for her in me and give her an enduring form. She instead didn’t want to be her, so she couldn’t do the same. <...> that was the underlying cause of the illness that she called “dissolving boundaries. "
― Elena Ferrante , The Story of the Lost Child (The Neapolitan Novels #4)