Paolo Cognetti Quotes

“A place you loved as a kid can also look completely different to you as an adult and turn out to be a disappointment; or it can remind you of what you are no longer and make you feel very sad.”

“And he said: it's you from the city who call it nature. She is so abstract in your head that even the name is abstract. Here we say forest, pasture, stream, rock, things that one can point with the finger. Things you can use. If you can't use them, we don't give them a name because they're useless.”

“As they say: sometimes you have to take a step backwards in order to move forwards. That is, if you have the humility to admit it to yourself.”

“Back up here after a long time. It would be nice to stay there all together, without seeing anyone anymore, without having to go down to the valley.”

“By now I'd learned to ask the grown-up questions, where you ask one thing to find out another.”

“Did the one who went around the eight mountains, or who reached the top of Mount Sumeru, learned more?”

“From my father I had learned, long after I had stopped following him along the paths, that in certain lives there are mountains to which we may never return. That in lives like his and mine, you cannot go back to the mountain that is in the center of all the rest, and at the beginning of your own story. And that wandering around the eight mountains is all that remains for those who, like us, on the first and highest, have lost a friend”

“I couldn't quite remember why I had moved away from the mountain, or what else I had loved when I no longer loved her, but it seemed to me, as I climbed it every morning in solitude, I was slowly making peace.”

“I didn't know whether to trust him because in the meantime I had changed.”

“I had learned from my father, long after I had stopped following him on the trails, that in some lives there are mountains to which it is not possible to return. That in lives like mine and his you can't go back to the mountain that is at the center of all the others, and at the beginning of your story. And that all that remains is to wander around the eight mountains for those who, like us, have lost a friend on the first and highest.”

“I was learning what happens to someone who leaves: that others continue to live without him.”

“If the point at which you immerse yourself in the river is the present, I thought, then the past is the water that has flowed past you, that which has gone downstream and where there is nothing left for you; whereas the future is the water that comes down from above, bringing dangers and surprises. The past is in the valley, the future is in the mountains.”

“If the point where you immerse yourself in a river is the present, I thought, then the past is the water that has washed past you, that continues downstream, where there is nothing left for you, while the future is the water that comes from above and that brings dangers and surprises. The past is downhill, the future uphill.”

“Look at that creek, do you see it? she said. Let's pretend that water is the time that flows. If here where we are is the present, which side do you think the future is on?”

“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.”