The Lost Daughter Quotes

Elena Ferrante
This Study Guide consists of approximately 105 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Lost Daughter.

The Lost Daughter Quotes

Elena Ferrante
This Study Guide consists of approximately 105 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Lost Daughter.
This section contains 1,406 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Lost Daughter Study Guide

The hardest things to talk about are the ones we ourselves can't understand.
-- Leda (chapter 1 paragraph 3)

Importance: The whole novel is Leda's attempt to understand her own actions. As she retells the story of how she came to leave her children, she tries to justify and make sense of it. Whenever someone asks her her reason for doing something, she either says she does not know or gives a noncommittal answer. She never understands why she takes, or keeps, the doll. Ironically, this quote comes at the outset of the novel, preparing the reader for a narrator who holds back, but Leda does not have a hard time talking about things she does not understand: she just cannot explain them.

The stomach of the females doesn’t have elastic membranes, it doesn’t sing, it’s mute.
-- Leda (chapter 2 paragraph 12)

Importance: Leda's obsession with pregnancy first appears when she finds the cicada on her pillow and imagines it...

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This section contains 1,406 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Lost Daughter Study Guide
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