Alberto Moravia Quotes

Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing—I’m a liar, in fact. That means I’m a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.

You can’t think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don’t think at all.

Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.

This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.

Loyalty, Signor Molteni, not love. Penelope is loyal to Ulysses but we do not know how far she loved him…and as you know people can sometimes be absolutely loyal without loving. In certain cases, in fact, loyalty is form of vengeance, of black-mail, of recovering one’s self-respect. Loyalty, not love.

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it’s going to be until I’m under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn’t. But I don’t sit back waiting for it. I work every day.

In life there are no problems, that is, objective and external choices; there is only the life which we do not resolve as a problem but which we live as an experience, whatever the final result may be.

Modern man-whether in the womb of the masses, or with his workmates, or with his family, or alone-can never for one moment forget that he is living in a world in which he is a means and whose end is not his business.

…my boredom might be described as a malady affecting external objects and consisting of a withering process; an almost instantaneous loss of vitality–just as though one saw a flower change in a few seconds from a bud to decay and dust.

The less one notices happiness, the greater it is.

I don’t think it’s possible to write a good novel around a negative personality.

Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.

And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.

I do not foresee a time when I shall feel that I have nothing to say.