Books Quotes by Italo Calvino

A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.

— Italo Calvino

Good literature can be created only with something that is different from literature.

— Italo Calvino

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

— Italo Calvino

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

— Italo Calvino

Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.

— Italo Calvino

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

— Italo Calvino

Politics is marginal, but literature moves along by indirection.

— Italo Calvino

“The author was an invisible point from which the books came”

— Italo Calvino

I change my method and field of reference from book to book because I can never believe in the same thing two…

— Italo Calvino

Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?

— Italo Calvino

“For years I have been coming to this library, and I explore it volume by volume, shelf by shelf, but I could…

— Italo Calvino

“Who ever said this author had an unmistakable tone? On the contrary, he is known as an author who changes greatly from…

— Italo Calvino

Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them…

— Italo Calvino

“The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud…

— Italo Calvino

Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened…

— Italo Calvino

Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my…

— Italo Calvino

“Do you want to demonstrate that the living also have a wordless language, with which books cannot be written but which can…

— Italo Calvino

“You cast another bewildered look at the books around you (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the…

— Italo Calvino

“All that can be done is for each of us to invent our own ideal library of our classics; and I would…

— Italo Calvino

“No, writing has not changed me for the better at all; I have merely used up part of my restless, conscienceless youth.…

— Italo Calvino

You have with you the book you were reading in the cafe, which you are eager to continue, so that you can…

— Italo Calvino

How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have…

— Italo Calvino

The book I'm looking for,' says the blurred figure, who holds out a volume similar to yours, 'is the one that gives…

— Italo Calvino

There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that…

— Italo Calvino

“You fight with dreams as with formless and meaningless life, seeking a pattern, a route that must surely be there, as when…

— Italo Calvino

“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

“Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,' Arkadian Porpirych says. 'What statistic allows one…

— Italo Calvino

“What is more natural than that a solidity, a complicity, a bond should be established between Reader and Reader, thanks to the…

— Italo Calvino

“In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you…

— Italo Calvino

“Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only…

— Italo Calvino

“Memory, or rather experience -- which is the memory of the event plus the wound it has inflicted on you, plus the…

— Italo Calvino

“Today each of you is the object of the other's reading, each reads in the other the unwritten story. Tomorrow, Reader and…

— Italo Calvino

“I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read," a third reader says, "but at every rereading I…

— Italo Calvino

“In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you…

— Italo Calvino

“Why not admit that my dissatisfaction reveals an excessive ambition, perhaps a megalomaniac delirium? For the writer who wants to annul himself…

— Italo Calvino

“Sections in the bookstore - Books You Haven't Read - Books You Needn't Read - Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading…

— Italo Calvino

“You fling the book on the floor, you would hurl it out of the window, even out of the closed window, through…

— Italo Calvino

“You’ve come about your manuscript? It’s with the reader; no, I’m getting that wrong, it’s been read, very interesting, of course, now…

— Italo Calvino

If the reader looks, I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories.

— Italo Calvino

For the critic, the author does not exist; only a certain number of writings exist.

— Italo Calvino