Reading books about Naples can make prepare you better to face Neapolitan culture once you are here. That is why we like to propose some a selection of quotes about Naples, once in a while!
Today, it’s the turn of Elena Ferrante, the famous anonymous author of “My Brilliant Friend”.
Quotes about Naples by Elena Ferrante
Seeing the city from the perspective of a writer is always fascinating. Here are some selected quotes about Napoli, extracts from books by Elena Ferrante. She is one of the most appreciated Italian writers all over the world. Her best-known work is “My Brilliant Friend” saga, who inspired the tv-series adaptation.
Even if “My Brilliant Friend” is fantastic and very evocative, Elena Ferrante wrote many other books. Most of them contain deep impressions of the city in a few words. Here are our favorites:
[…] it is a metropolis that has anticipated and anticipates Italian, perhaps European, evils. Therefore it would never be lost from sight. […] What we could be, on this planet, and1 what unfortunately we are, in Naples is seen better than elsewhere (La Frantumaglia)
Naples was the great European metropolis were with greater clarity the trust in techniques, in science, in economic development, in the goodness of nature, in history that necessarily leads to the best, in democracy had proved completely groundless in advance. Being born in this city […] means only one thing: to always know, almost by instinct, what today among a thousand differences I support as everyone else: the dream of Unlimited progress is actually a nightmare full of ferocity and death. (The Story of the Lost Child)
No decipherable order, just an unruly and irrepressible crowd in the streets cluttered with vendors of every possible merchandise, people talking very loudly, urchins, beggars. Ah, there is no city that spreads so much noise and noise as Naples… (The Story of the Lost Child)