Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle, was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation and existentialism. Moravia is best known for his debut novel Gli indifferentiand for the anti-fascist novel Il Conformista, the basis for the film The Conformistdirected by Bernardo Bertolucci. Other novels of his adapted for the cinema are Agostino, filmed with the same title by Mauro Bolognini in 1962; Il disprezzo, filmed by Jean-Luc Godard as Le Mépris; La Noia, filmed...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 November 1907
CountryItaly
Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.
I don't think it's possible to write a good novel around a negative personality.
The novel as we knew it in the nineteenth century was killed off by Proust and Joyce.
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.
The less one notices happiness, the greater it is.
...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 ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.
And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.
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.
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.
Because the world to-day is so constructed that no one can do what he would like to do, and he is forced, instead, to do what others wish him to do. Because the question of money always intrudes—into what we do, into what we are, into what we wish to become, into our work, into our highest aspirations, even into our relations with the people we love!
This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.