“Why not admit that my dissatisfaction reveals an excessive ambition, perhaps a megalomaniac delirium? For the writer who wants to annul himself… — 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
“I say to myself that the result of the unnatural effort to which I subject myself, writing, must be the respiration of… — 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
“Who ever said this author had an unmistakable tone? On the contrary, he is known as an author who changes greatly from… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“So here you are now, ready to attack the first lines of the first page. You prepare to recognize the unmistakable tone… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Good literature can be created only with something that is different from literature. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Some books will remain famous but will be considered anonymous works, as for us the epic of Gilgamesh; others author's names will… — 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
If the reader looks, I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“You are quick to catch the author's intentions and nothing escapes you” — 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
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
“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
“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
“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 Copy Share Image
“For years I have been coming to this library, and I explore it volume by volume, shelf by shelf, but I could… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Do you want to demonstrate that the living also have a wordless language, with which books cannot be written but which can… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single,… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. — 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
