“Perhaps only dead know, and only for them is the war really over.”

— Cesare Pavese, The House on the Hill (1949), ending words

About Cesare Pavese

1908 – 1950

Italian poet and novelist, author of the diary "This Business of Living".

“Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.”

“Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it—only then—for the first time.”

“Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.”

“Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.”

“Like the fool, the wise man too must die!”

“It is a contest between ignorance and death, or wisdom and life.”

“Every joy that some experience is paid for by the sorrow of others.”

“The dignity of truth is lost With much protesting.”

“Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.”