I have spent more time with other people's books than with my own. I do not regret it. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Perhaps nothing escapes this fate but the liveliness and nimbleness of the mind—the very qualities with which the novel is written, qualities… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
My stories are full of facts; they have a beginning and an end. For that reason, they will never... occupy a place… — 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
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
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
“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
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
The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in… — 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
Whether there is such a thing as Reality, of which the various levels are only partial aspects, or whether there are only… — 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
“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“1 )Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Now she is inviting you to a seminar at the university, where books are analyzed according to all Codes, Conscious and Unconscious,… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“If you think about it, reading is a necessarily individual act, far more than writing. If we assume that writing manages to… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Lovers' reading of each other's bodies (of that concentrate of mind and body which lovers use to go to bed together) differs… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“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 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
It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“The moment that counts most for me is the one that precedes reading. At times a title is enough to kindle in… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Your case gives me new hope," I said to him. "With me, more and more often I happen to pick up a… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with… — 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
“It’s not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign - a bad sign mostly… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
My confidence in the future of literature consists in the knowledge that there are things that only literature can give us, by… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
The novels that attract me most... are those that create an illusion of transperancy around a knot of human relationships as obscure,… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just… — 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
Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“As long as I know there exists in the world someone who does tricks only for the love of the trick, as… — 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
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
“(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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“... KUBLAI: We have proved that if we were here, we would not be. POLO: And here, in fact, we are.” — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
We could say, then, that man is an instrument the world employs to renew its own image constantly. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
