Orr: Philip Roth says that “discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.” How far would you agree with him on this?

Ferrante: I prefer to call it illicit appropriation rather than indiscretion. Writing for me is a dragnet that carries everything along with it: expressions and figures of speech, postures, feelings, thoughts, troubles. In short, the lives of others. Not to mention the ransacking of the enormous warehouse that is literary tradition.