Italo Calvino

...And meanwhile the Galaxy ran through space and left behind those signs old and new and I still hadn't found mine.

— Italo Calvino

It is not the voice that commands the story; it is the ear.

— Italo Calvino

Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.

— Italo Calvino

A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without reading it!" and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading.

— Italo Calvino

Man is simply the best chance we know of that matter has had of providing itself with information about itself.

— Italo Calvino

It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.

— Italo Calvino

The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them.

— Italo Calvino

In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single, homogeneous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of the written language.

— Italo Calvino

Gore is a man without an unconscious.

— Italo Calvino

«What makes love making and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space»

— Italo Calvino

As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. (di quest'onda che rifluisce dai ricordi la città s'imbeve coma una spugna e si dilata). The city, however, does not tell of its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand...

— Italo Calvino

With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

— Italo Calvino

Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me." Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch.

— Italo Calvino