Alberto Moravia quotes

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

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

Alberto Moravia

Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources - and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future.

Alberto Moravia

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.

Alberto Moravia

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.

Alberto Moravia

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.

Alberto Moravia

When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.

Alberto Moravia

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

Alberto Moravia

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

Alberto Moravia

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

Alberto Moravia

You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all. (Alberto Moravia)

In the beginning was boredom, commonly called chaos. God, bored with boredom, created the earth, the sky, the waters, the animals, the plants, Adam and Eve; and the latter, bored in their turn in paradise, ate the forbidden fruit. God became bored with them and drove them out of Eden.

Alberto Moravia