"I speak and speak,” Marco says, “but the……" — Italo Calvino
"I speak and speak,” Marco says, “but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. The description of the world to which you lend a benevolent ear is one thing; the description that will go the rounds of the groups of stevedores and gondoliers on the street outside my house the day of my return is another; and yet another, that which I might dictate late in life, if I were taken prisoner by Genoese pirates and put in irons in the same cell with a writer of adventure stories. It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear."
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Italo Calvino
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178 Quotes by Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino has 178 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines.
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Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances,…
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In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision.
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It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
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A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
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The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born.…
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The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.
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The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he…
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What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's…
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It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the night and gradually…
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The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, removed as…
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The city of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other, but they are not the same…
See all 178 quotes by Italo Calvino »
More Adventure Quotes
This quote is filed under Adventure Quotes,
one of 1,845 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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Why, I'd like nothing better than to achieve some bold adventure, worthy of our trip.
— Aristophanes
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Happiness depends upon ourselves.
— Aristotle
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All in all, for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight, I was disappointed by the…
— Neil Armstrong
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I had a huge advantage when I started 50 years ago - my job was secure. I didn't have to…
— David Attenborough
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The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
— Saint Augustine
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Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason…
— Marcus Aurelius
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In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.
— Ansel Adams
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I think mostly it's the adventure that I will have in making the movie. That's what I look for.
— Christian Bale
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To die will be an awfully big adventure.
— James M. Barrie
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Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube; there are some things one would rather have done…
— Edward Abbey
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Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in…
— Mary Ritter Beard
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Youth is the spirit of adventure and awakening. It is a time of physical emerging when the body attains the…
— Ezra Taft Benson
See all 1,845 Adventure Quotes »
