Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will. All the rest - thought, action - is just a pastime, mental or physical. What counts then, is to come to grips with reality. The rest can go.
Cesare PaveseRead
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Indifference can ignite deep feelings of love and attraction in us.
Cesare Pavese's quote suggests that when someone exhibits indifference, it can lead to a heightened emotional response from us, as we often find ourselves drawn to those who seem unattainable or disinterested. This paradox of attraction highlights how our emotional connections can be influenced by the perceived lack of interest, prompting us to desire the very people who may not reciprocate our affections.
Themes
IndifferenceLoveAttractionEmotionParadox
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about unrequited love, one might quote Pavese to illustrate how indifference can evoke strong feelings.
More from Cesare Pavese
All quotes →Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
Cesare PaveseRead
Dawn's faint breath breathes with your mouth at the ends of empty streets. Gray light your eyes, sweet drops of dawn on dark hills. Your steps and breath like the wind of dawn smother houses. The city shudders, Stones exhale— you are life, an awakening. Star lost in the light of dawn, trill of the breeze, warmth, breath— the night is done. You are light and morning.
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There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.
Cesare PaveseRead
One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.
Cesare PaveseRead
The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
Cesare PaveseRead
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