#lenú

[full-of--art]

You

are

my

brilliant

friend

📖

[meusgrifos]

He was rather sharp, almost vulgar. If he is more important to you than yourself — he said one evening, seeming almost dazed — you should take him as he is: wife, children, that permanent tendency to sleep with other women, the vulgar things he is and will be capable of. Lena, Lenuccia, he murmured, affectionately, shaking his head. And then he laughed, got up from the chair, said obscurely that in his view love ended only when it was possible to return to oneself without fear or disgust, and left the room with shuffling steps, as if he wanted to reassure himself of the materiality of the floor.

— Elena Ferrante, in "The Story of the Lost Child", 4th volume of the Neapolitan Novels.