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Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next.

Cesare Pavese

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Cesare Pavese
Age: 41 †
Born: 1908
Born: September 9
Died: 1950
Died: August 27
Biographer
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Editor
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Every
Period
Multiplied
Long
Periods
Reflections
Really
Childhood
Impressions
Life
Probably
Adolescence
Upon
Formed
Next
Maturity
Also
Impression
Seems
Reflection

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Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.
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Here's the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.
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In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.
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Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.
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When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.
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People who don't know any better will always be in the dark because the power lies in the hands of men who take good care that ordinary folk don't understand, in the hands, that is, of the government, of the clerical party, of the capitalists.
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There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man.
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It had to happen to you, to concentrate your whole life on one point, and then discover that you can do anything except live at that point.
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The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
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Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
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Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.
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War makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those values.
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It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it.
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Whatever people may say, the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easygoing behaviour of the common middle class. In moments of crisis, the former know how to act, the latter become uncouth brutes.
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At great periods you have always felt, deep within you, the temptation to commit suicide. You gave yourself to it, breached your own defenses. You were a child. The idea of suicide was a protest against life by dying, you would escape this longing for death.
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Don't you know that what happens to you once always happens again? You always react in the same way to the same thing. It's no accident when you make a mess. Then you do it again. It's called destiny.
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We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
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Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live.
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