Paolo Cognetti Quotes Page 2

“One finds one's place in the world in less unpredictable ways than one thinks: after much wandering I ended up in a big city at the foot of the mountains, with a woman who basically did my mother's job.”

“One has to do what life has taught him to do. Maybe when he's very young, who knows, he can still choose to change his ways. But at a certain point one should stop and say: well, I'm capable of doing this, I'm not able to do this one.”

“Perhaps it is true, as my mother said, that each one of us has a favorite height in the mountains, a landscape that resembles it and in which we feel good.”

“Sometimes, love exhausts itself gradually, and sometimes it comes to an end suddenly.”

“The most beautiful refuge is in the memory.”

“The mountain is not only snow and cliffs, ridges, streams, lakes, pastures. The mountain is a way of living life. One step in front of the other, silence, time and measure.”

“The reassurance that comes from always playing the same part, in the knowledge that the other will play his: they had no arguments, but performed a little play whose ending I saw coming every time, and I too was ultimately caught in that pattern.”

“The wooden platform at the entrance, with countless holes from the tips of crampons, was full of backpacks, ropes, sweaters and socks hanging out to dry from climbers who passed by with untied boots and underwear in hand.”

“You find your place in the world much less predictably than you'd imagine.”

“You have to do what life has taught you to do. Perhaps when you’re still very young you can choose, maybe, to change the course of your life. But at a certain point you have to stop and say to yourself: fine, this is what I’m capable of doing and this is what I can’t do.”

“I was stuck with so many me's that I sometimes went for a walk through the woods in the evening to be alone for a while.”

“It is a special understanding that is created in a double ascent: in the long run, it is as if you shared with your companion not only a rope and a trace in the snow, but also a breath, thoughts, a heartbeat.”

“Ten months out of the year, I felt trapped in clean clothes and a rule-based system of authority; in the mountains I shook it all off and gave my true nature space.”

“When I look at it, I think of the four centuries old larches: one century in the forest and the other three to prop up a house, and that seems to me the noblest service a tree can render to a human being.”

“Breaking camp every day is the law of the caravan, but to understand one would have to stop, stay.”

“I realized that already in saying gain and lose there is an all-Western economic sense of going to the mountains, where altitude and distance are the capitals we accumulate with our effort, and we don't like wasting the investment at all.”

“One of my teachers said that borders are particularly odious in the mountains, because on both sides of the watershed the same grain is cultivated, the same beasts graze, they have the same customs..”