I'm afraid I don't think I really have a life on which something can be written. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Since I have become a slave of writing, the pleasure of reading has ended for me.” — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Writing always means hiding something in such a way that it then is discovered. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“My faith in the future of literature rests on the knowledge that there are things that only literature, with its particular capacities,… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
I read Freud because I find him an excellent writer... a writer of police thrillers that can be followed with great passion. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
I am more and more convinced that literature is made up of works, genres, schools, discussions, problems, collective work in order to… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Don't ask where the rest of this book is!" It is a shrill cry that comes from an undefined spot among the… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
It is only through the confining act of writing that the immensity of the nonwritten becomes legible — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write licking their finger. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
The public figure of the writer, the writer-character, the 'personality-cult' of the author, are all becoming for me more and more intolerable… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“This is the paradox of the power of literature: it seems that only when it is persecuted does it show its true… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
To write well about the elegant world you have to know it and experience it to the depths of your being... what… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
I would very much like to be one of those writers who have something really clear in their head to say, and… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
I'm only a novelist on occasion. Many of my books are made up of brief texts collected together, short stories, or else… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Writing always means hiding something in such a way that it then is discovered; because the truth that can come from my… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Now you mustn't think that I don't have any ideas for novels in my head. I've got ideas for ten novels in… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Reading," he says, "is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid material object,… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“You turn the book over in your hands, you scan the sentences on the back of the jacket, generic phrases that don't… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“But Ludmilla is always at least one step ahead of you. “I like to know that book exists that I will still… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,' Arkadian Porpirych says. 'What statistic allows one… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people,… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“All that can be done is for each of us to invent our own ideal library of our classics; and I would… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Something must always remain that eludes us ... For power to have an object on which it can be exercised, a space… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read," a third reader says, "but at every rereading I… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“What is more natural than that a solidity, a complicity, a bond should be established between Reader and Reader, thanks to the… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Sections in the bookstore - Books You Haven't Read - Books You Needn't Read - Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“You fling the book on the floor, you would hurl it out of the window, even out of the closed window, through… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“(one would say yes, if not every day, at least fairly regularly), whether only for yourself or also for others (often only for yourself,… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“The Great Khan tried to concentrate on the game: but now it was the game’s reason that eluded him. The end of every game… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“Or else you can say, like the camel driver who took me there: "I arrived here in my first youth, one morning, many people… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“The naked man had lost hope now; he would never be able to return to the earth's surface;he would never leave the bottom of… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“The art of writing tales consists in an ability to draw the rest of life from the little one has understood of it; but… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“I ask you to come down to earth," said the Baron in a calm, rather faint voice, "and to take up the duties of… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, removed as a result of ancient… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“... KUBLAI: We have proved that if we were here, we would not be. POLO: And here, in fact, we are.” — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“And yet, in Raissa, at every moment there is a child in a window who laughs seeing a dog that has jumped on a… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“Ludmilla, now you are being read. Your body is being subjected to a systematic reading, through channels of tactile information, visual, olfactory, and not… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“Once the process of falsification is set in motion, it won't stop. We're in a country where everything that can be falsified has been… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“Your case gives me new hope," I said to him. "With me, more and more often I happen to pick up a novel that… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
We could say, then, that man is an instrument the world employs to renew its own image constantly. — Italo Calvino Copy Share
“Perhaps it is this story that is a bridge over the void, and as it advances it flings forward news and sensations and emotions… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
Yet, even now, ever time (often) that I find that I don't understand something, then instinctively, I'm filled with the hope that perhaps this… — Italo Calvino Copy Share
