“ Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be. Italo Calvino
“ I speak and speak, Marco says, but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. The description of the world to which you lend a benevolent ear is one thing; the description that will go the r… Italo Calvino
“ You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Italo Calvino
“ Lovers' reading of each other's bodies (of that concentrate of mind and body which lovers use to go to bed together) differs from the reading of written pages in that it is not linear. It starts at an… Italo Calvino
“ The novels that attract me most... are those that create an illusion of transperancy around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible. Italo Calvino
“ Si conobbero. Lui conobbe lei e se stesso, perché in verità non s'era mai saputo. E lei conobbe lui e se stessa, perché pur essendosi saputa sempre, mai s'era potuta riconoscere così. Italo Calvino
“ You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from bo… Italo Calvino
“ L'inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n'è uno, è quello che è già qui, l'inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo r… Italo Calvino
“ The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape… Italo Calvino
“ I'm accustomed to thinking of literature as a search for knowledge; in order to move onto existential terrain I need to consider it in relation to anthropology, ethnology, and mythology. Italo Calvino
“ As Raimbaut dragged a dead man along he thought, ‘Ohcorpse, I have come rushing here only to be dragged along by theheels like you. What is this frenzy that drives me, this mania forbattle and for lov… Italo Calvino
“ Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the… Italo Calvino
“ In the streets of Cecilia, an illustrious city, I met once a goatherd, driving a tinkling flock along the walls."Man blessed by heaven," he asked me, stopping, "can you tell me the name of the city in… Italo Calvino
“ With the smell of beer I try to get the smell of death off me. And only the smell of death will get the smell of beer off you, like all the drinkers whose graves I have to dig. Italo Calvino
“ ...And meanwhile the Galaxy ran through space and left behind those signs old and new and I still hadn't found mine. Italo Calvino
“ As far as you are able to gather from hints scattered through these letters, Apocryphal Power, riven by internecine battles and eluding the control of its founder, Ermes Marana, has broken into two gr… Italo Calvino
“ I, on the contrary, have been convinced for some time that perfection is not produced except marginally and by chance; therefore it deserves no interest at all, the true nature of things being reveale… Italo Calvino
“ In fact the problem Leopardi is facing is speculative and metaphysical, a problem in the history of philosophy from Parmenides to Descartes and Kant: the relationship between the idea of infinity as a… Italo Calvino
