Italo Calvino

Folktales are real.

— Italo Calvino

There is no language without deceit.

— Italo Calvino

I suffer from everyday life.

— Italo Calvino

“Fantasy is a place where it rains.”

— Italo Calvino

“I desideri sono già ricordi.”

— Italo Calvino

“I am the I of the present”

— Italo Calvino

Now, the old man happened to be the Lord.

— Italo Calvino

I have never loved any writer as much as Hemingway.

— Italo Calvino

I was born in Cuba, and my parents were tropical agronomists.

— Italo Calvino

For the man who thought he was Man there is no salvation.

— Italo Calvino

“A poor writer is one who names rather than represents.”

— Italo Calvino

“We all have a secret wound which we are fighting to avenge.”

— Italo Calvino

I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!

— Italo Calvino

“You are quick to catch the author's intentions and nothing escapes you”

— Italo Calvino

“No, memory is true as long as you do not set it, as long as it is not enclosed in a form.”

— 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

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.

— Italo Calvino

If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights…

— Italo Calvino

Of course, I'm of the generation that grew up with Hemingway and Faulkner as strong influences.

— Italo Calvino

“Wojna to trochę rzeźnia, a trochę rutyna i nie ma co czepiać się zanadto szczegółów.”

— Italo Calvino

I read Freud because I find him an excellent writer... a writer of police thrillers that can be followed with great passion.

— Italo Calvino

“But already ships were vanishing over the horizon and I was left behind, in this world of ours full of responsibilities and…

— Italo Calvino

“My faith in the future of literature rests on the knowledge that there are things that only literature, with its particular capacities,…

— Italo Calvino

“,There is never a moonlight night but wicked ideas in evil souls writhe like serpents in nests, and charitable ones sprout lilies…

— Italo Calvino

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

The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo…

— Italo Calvino

A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love…

— Italo Calvino

“To fall in the void as I fell: none of you knows what that means… I went down into the void, to…

— Italo Calvino

The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just…

— Italo Calvino

“You're the absolute protagonist of this book, very well; but do you believe that gives you the right to have carnal relations…

— Italo Calvino

“His trees were now hung all over with scrawled pieces of paper and bits of cardboard with maxims from Seneca and Shaftesbury,…

— Italo Calvino

“There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid…

— Italo Calvino

So began their love, the boy happy and amazed, she happy and not surprised at all (nothing happens by chance to girls).…

— Italo Calvino

“How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories…

— Italo Calvino

“Valdrada’s inhabitants know that each of their actions is, at once, that action and its mirror-image, which possesses the special dignity of…

— Italo Calvino

“When a body succeeds in emitting or in reflecting luminous vibrations in a distinct and recognizable order--I thought--what does it do with…

— Italo Calvino

“What makes Argia different from other cities is that it has earth instead of air. The streets are completely filled with dirt,…

— Italo Calvino

“I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibers that absorb…

— Italo Calvino

I feel so at home in New York that I don't have the urge to write about it.

— Italo Calvino

You'll understand when you've forgotten what you understood before

— Italo Calvino