# Quote — Cesare Pavese, The House on the Hill

> For a long time we had talked of the hill as we might have talked of the sea or the woods. I used to go back there in the evening from the city when it grew dusk, and for me it was not just another place but a point of view, a way of life. For instance, I saw no difference between those hills and these ancient ones where I played as a child and where I live now: the same broken, straggling country, cultivated and wild, the same roads, farmhouses, and ravines. I used to climb up there in the evening as if I too were fleeing the nightly shock of the air-raid alarms.

- Author: [Cesare Pavese](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cesare-pavese.md)
- Book: [The House on the Hill](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cesare-pavese/the-house-on-the-hill.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cesare_Pavese#The_House_on_the_Hill_(1949)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/cesare-pavese/the-house-on-the-hill/for-a-long

## More from this book

> There is something indecent in words.

p. 126 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cesare-pavese/the-house-on-the-hill/there-is-something.md)

> I was happy enough; I knew that during the night the whole city might go up in flames and all its people be killed, but the ravines, houses, and footpaths would wake in the morning calm and unchanged.

p. 63 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cesare-pavese/the-house-on-the-hill/i-was-happy.md)

> Even today I wonder why those Germans didn't wait for me at the villa and send someone to look for me in Turin. It is because of their failure that I am still free and up here. Why I should have been saved and not Gallo, or Tono, or Cate, I don't know. Perhaps because I'm supposed to suffer for others? Because I'm the most useless and don't deserve anything, not even punishment? Because I went into a church that time? The experience of danger creates more cowards every day. It makes one stupid. I have reached the point of being alive only by chance, when many better men than I are dead, I don't like it, it's not enough. At time, after having listened to the useless radio and looked through the windows at the empty vineyards, I think that living by accident is not living, and I wonder if have really escaped.

p. 144 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cesare-pavese/the-house-on-the-hill/even-today-i-wonder.md)