“Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Every time I've had to do journalistic investigations, I've cursed, but later I discovered that it had helped me enormously with writing… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“The book should be the written counterpart of the unwritten world; its subject should be what does not exist and cannot exist… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
When I'm writing a book, I prefer not to speak about it, because only when the book is finished can I try… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hendecasyllables; so after a while,… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
I write by hand, making many, many corrections. I would say I cross out more than I write. I have to hunt… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment… — 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
