Top 40 Alessandro Baricco Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “This is the seashore. Neither land nor sea. It’s a place that does not exist.”

— Alessandro Baricco

2. “The last light, in the last window, went out. Only the unstoppable machine of the sea still tears away at the silence with the cyclical explosion of nocturnal waves, distant memories of sleepwalking storms and the shipwrecks of dream.”

— Alessandro Baricco

3. “I did not love you out or boredom or loneliness or caprice. I loved you because the desire for you was stronger than any happiness.”

— Alessandro Baricco

4. “Read the flight of your arrow if you want to know your future.”

— Alessandro Baricco

5. “Perhaps sometimes life shows you a side of itself which leaves you with nothing more to say.”

— Alessandro Baricco

6. “Stava pensando alla misteriosa permanenza dell’amore, nella corrente mai ferma della vita.”

— Alessandro Baricco

7. “She had not really a sensitive soul, but to put it in exact terms, was possessed by an uncontrollable feeling of mind.”

— Alessandro Baricco

8. “To die of yearning for something you will never experience.”

— Alessandro Baricco

9. “Passarono ore, seduti uno accanto all’altro, a parlare e a tacere.”

— Alessandro Baricco

10. “We are full of words whose true meaning we haven’t been taught, and one of those words is suffering. Another is the word death. We don’t know what they mean, but we use them, and this is a mystery.”

— Alessandro Baricco

11. “Devo comunicarvi una cosa molto importante, monsieur. Facciamo tutti schifo. Siamo tutti meravigliosi, e facciamo tutti schifo.”

— Alessandro Baricco

12. “You’re never really done for, as long as you’ve got a good story and someone to tell it to.”

— Alessandro Baricco

13. “Per favore, Novecento, solo le note normali, okay?”.”

— Alessandro Baricco

14. “Il resto era ancora nulla. Inventarlo – questo sarebbe stato meraviglioso.”

— Alessandro Baricco

15. “In the world I inhabit, there is a shortage of intellectual honesty, but not of intelligence.”

— Alessandro Baricco

16. “La sconcertante scoperta di quanto sia silenzioso, il destino, quando, d’un tratto, esplode.”

— Alessandro Baricco

17. “Definitive resolutions are made always and only in a state of mind that is not destined to last.”

— Alessandro Baricco

18. “Ognuno di noi, ha bisogno di sogni per vivere.”

— Alessandro Baricco

19. “First is my name, second those eyes, third a thought, fourth the coming of the night, fifth those mangled bodies, sixth is hunger, seventh is horror, eighth the specters of madness, ninth is meat, and tenth is a man who watches me but does not kill me.”

— Alessandro Baricco

20. “Elle pleuvait, sa vie, devant ses yeux, spectacle tranquille.”

— Alessandro Baricco

21. “As you see, it is not that I don’t know my own mind, I know it very well but only up to a certain point in the matter. I know perfectly well what the question is. It’s the answer I want.”

— Alessandro Baricco

22. “Reasons get forgotten.”

— Alessandro Baricco

23. “Mourir de nostalgie pour quelque chose que tu ne vivras jamais.”

— Alessandro Baricco

24. “Como por un singular precepto, dondequiera que fuese, aquel hombre andaba en una soledad incondicional.”

— Alessandro Baricco

25. “He wasn’t much cut out for serious conversations. And a goodbye is a serious conversation.”

— Alessandro Baricco

26. “He was, besides, one of those men who like to witness their own life, considering any ambition to live it inappropriate.”

— Alessandro Baricco

27. “Writing to someone is the only way to wait for him without hurting oneself.”

— Alessandro Baricco

28. “In this transparency, the footprints of the little birds spoke with a muffled voice. What they spoke of was entirely without significance, or else something capable of lifting a life off its hinges: there was no way of knowing.”

— Alessandro Baricco

29. “Quando si spense la seconda lampadina, entrambi si girarono a guardarla, per un attimo. Sembrava quando si aspettano le stelle cadenti, nelle notti d’estate.”

— Alessandro Baricco

30. “There is nothing that can, in the dark become true.”

— Alessandro Baricco

31. “Do you have children? she asked. No. Why? The man answered that one had to have faith in the world to have children.”

— Alessandro Baricco

32. “It was surprising to consider that in fact there were signs, that is the embers of a voice destroyed by fire.”

— Alessandro Baricco

33. “No se puede apagar el mar, cuando arde en la noche.”

— Alessandro Baricco

34. “Because despair was an excess that did not belong to him, he submitted to what was left of his life, and began again to look after it, with the unyielding tenacity of a gardener at work the morning after the storm.”

— Alessandro Baricco

35. “There are people who die and, with all due respect, you don’t lose anything. But he was one of those that when they’re gone you feel it. As if the whole world had become, from one day to the next, a little heavier.”

— Alessandro Baricco

36. “Sono i desideri che salvano. Quando era troppo tardi, io ho iniziato a desiderare. Con tutta la forza che avevo. Mi sono fatta tanto di quel male che tu non te lo puoi nemmeno immaginare.”

— Alessandro Baricco

37. “Growing up, loving, having children, growing old – and all this while we are elsewhere, in the long time of an answer that doesn’t arrive, or of a gesture that doesn’t end. How many paths, and at what a different pace we retrace them, in what seems a single journey.”

— Alessandro Baricco

38. “Jasper Gwyn taught me that we aren’t characters, we’re stories,” said Rebecca. “We stop at the idea of being a character engaged in who knows what adventure, even a very simple one, but what we have to understand is that we are the whole story, not just that character. We are the wood where he walks, the bad guy who cheats him, the mess around him, all the people who pass, the color of things, the sounds.”

— Alessandro Baricco

39. “Le ragioni sono dimenticati.”

— Alessandro Baricco

40. “About aviaries: “You fill it up, as many as you can. Then one day when something good happens to you, you throw it open and watch them fly away.”

— Alessandro Baricco

41. “He fell to the ground like an olive tree, young, beautiful, strong, covered with white blossoms, suddenly shattered by a bolt of lightning in a storm.”

— Alessandro Baricco

42. “Bisogna avere fiducia nel mondo per fare dei figli.”

— Alessandro Baricco

43. “C’erano intorno ragazzini che correvano, cani che volevano tornare a casa e coppie di anziani con l’aria di essere scampati a qualcosa di terrificante. La loro vita, probabilmente.”

— Alessandro Baricco

44. “Adesso non le riusciva di tornare indietro da nessuna parte, e nessun cammino pareva possibile d’altronde, senza di lui.”

— Alessandro Baricco