Cesare Pavese

Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will. All the rest – thought, action – is just a pastime, mental or physical. What counts then, is to come to grips with reality. The rest can go.

Cesare Pavese

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.

Cesare Pavese

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

Cesare Pavese

The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.

Cesare Pavese

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

Cesare Pavese

The great lovers will always be unhappy, because for them love is great and so they ask of their beloved the same intensity of thought that they have for her – otherwise they feel betrayed.

Cesare Pavese

The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.

Cesare Pavese

The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment.

Cesare Pavese

The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else’s.

Cesare Pavese

The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away.

Cesare Pavese