Erri De Luca Quotes

#1. Sometimes to take two steps in a row, one after the other, I need to make a contract with myself.

Erri De Luca

#2. I grow fond of David, who lays a single stone before Goliath and a single book, the Psalms, in the mouth of the world.

Erri De Luca

#3. Death that tears away clumps of us folks, stuffs thousands of the living, freshly plucked into its sack.

Erri De Luca

#4. War is when young men dream of being grandfathers.

Erri De Luca

#5. Do you really know yourself so well or are you making it up?' she asks. Some things I concoct, some I glean from my senses, most I thirst for.

Erri De Luca

#6. This is what books should do: Carry a person and not be carried by him; take the day off his back, not add its own ounces of paper to his vertebrae.

Erri De Luca

#7. I'm not that man anymore. No one can stay that way too long. That's why wars end and a later generation catches its breath looking forward and erasing what's behind.

Erri De Luca

#8. That's how you keep someone tied to you, not set them free. You say no to a man and don't give him the peace of repayment.

Erri De Luca

#9. A man dies and his skin loses heat like the sand on a summer evening. It makes you feel like warming him up.

Erri De Luca

#10. Build your house with the stones they hurled at you

Erri De Luca

#11. On the brink of sleep I have a gloomy thought: that saving yourself is only pushing yourself even deeper into the trap rather than getting out. Dying is the only way out.

Erri De Luca

#12. I like people who can't die in their bed.

Erri De Luca

#13. You stay in the war because it would be shameful to stay out of it. An then grief seizes you and hold its grip till anger has turned you into a soldier.

Erri De Luca

#14. It's disgusting to kill, Laila. You never get rid of death's grease. It doesn't wash away.

Erri De Luca

#15. You're right to say "hold on to" instead of "keep." To keep is presumptuous. To hold means you realize that today it's yours and tomorrow who knows.

Erri De Luca

#16. The geometry of the things around us creates coincidences, intersections.

Erri De Luca

#17. I love you because that piece that remains is worth the whole and I love you by exclusion of the other lost pieces.

Erri De Luca

#18. When you get homesick, it's not something missing, it's something present, a visit. People and places from far away arrive and keep you company for a while.

Erri De Luca

#19. I can hardly keep track of the things I don't know, but every now and then comes an ignorance that makes me nostalgic.

Erri De Luca

#20. The spoon is a reader's friend, scooping from the plate almost by itself. The fork requires more attention.

Erri De Luca