Forbidden Notebook

“I’ll put it in the closet,” I thought. “No, Mirella’s always going in there to get something of mine to wear, a pair of gloves, a blouse. The night table, Michele always opens it. The desk is now occupied by Riccardo.” I considered that in the entire house, I no longer had a drawer, or any storage space, that was still mine. I proposed to assert m

But maybe it’s hard to maintain friendships for a lifetime no matter what. In reality, at a certain moment, each of us changes, becomes different, some go forward, others remain fixed, and thus we move in opposite directions, so there’s no longer a meeting place, no longer anything in common.

He said that in the presence of the children, and they looked at me with amazement. It’s terrible to think that I sacrificed my entire self to beautifully perform tasks that they consider obvious, natural.

ever since I happened to start keeping a diary, I seem to have discovered that a word or an intonation can be just as important, or even more, than the facts we’re accustomed to consider important.

If I hadn’t written it, I would have forgotten about it. We’re always inclined to forget what we’ve said or done in the past, partly in order not to have the tremendous obligation to remain faithful to it. Otherwise, it seems to me, we would all discover that we’re full of mistakes and, above all, contradictions, between what we intended to do and

Later It’s two in the morning. I got up to write: I can’t sleep. Yet again it’s the fault of this notebook. Before, I’d immediately forget what happened at home; now, instead, since I began to write down daily events, I hold on to them in my memory and try to understand why they occurred. If it’s true that the hidden presence of this notebook gives

I also liked it because it allowed me to justify the impulse of tenderness roused in me by Michele’s manner, which has remained candid and ingenuous, even now that he’s almost fifty. When he calls me “mamma” I respond in a tone that’s severe yet loving, the same I used with Riccardo when he was a child. But now I see that it was a mistake; he was t

It’s terrible for a mother to ask herself that question about her own daughter, a girl of twenty. But I couldn’t talk to anyone about it; Riccardo and Michele would react violently. Men always say, “You’ll be sorry if my daughter, you’ll be sorry if my sister …” They say, “I won’t tolerate it.” It’s easy to say “I won’t tolerate it.” Yet things hap

“I was always very anxious about you, about your future. When you got married you seemed to do it only in order to leave home, to be free. I thought you’d be a terrible wife, since you didn’t seem at all in love with Michele. Then it passes,” she repeated. I wanted to reply, assure her that I had never wanted to go, leave them, I wanted to say that