Writing always means hiding something in such a way that it then is discovered. — 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
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
“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
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
“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
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 writer is someone who tears himself to pieces in order to liberate his neighbor. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
To write well about the elegant world you have to know it and experience it to the depths of your being... what… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
I would very much like to be one of those writers who have something really clear in their head to say, and… — 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
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
“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
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
“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
“Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,' Arkadian Porpirych says. 'What statistic allows one… — 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
“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
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
“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
“The moment that counts most for me is the moment that precedes reading. At times a title is enough to kindle in… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Don't you ever get tired of reading?" she asked. "You could hardly be called good company! Don't you know that, with women,… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
I'm terrified of writing at night, for then I can't sleep. So I start slowly, slowly writing in the morning and go… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Turin is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
I have spent more time with other people's books than with my own. I do not regret it. — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Sometimes I try to concentrate on the story I would like to write, and I realize that what interests me is something… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined. And this definition is something you may then… — 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
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
“The art of writing tales consists in an ability to draw the rest of life from the little one has understood of… — 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
“(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
