Quotes from Italo Calvino

With cities, it is as if 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.

We were still in the boundless void, striped here and there by a streak or two of hydrogen around the vortexes of the first constellations. I admit it required very complicated deductions to foresee the Mesopotamian plains black with men and horses and arrows and trumpets, but, since I had nothing else to do, I could bring it off.

La conoscenza del prossimo ha questo di speciale: passa necessariamente attraverso la conoscenza di se stesso.

No, memory is true as long as you do not set it, as long as it is not enclosed in a form.

KUBLAI: I do not know when you have had time to visit all the countries you describe to me. It seems to me you have never moved from this garden. POLO: Everything I see and do assumes meaning in a mental space where the same calm reigns as here, the same penumbra, the same silence streaked by the rustling of learn. At the moment when I concentrate and reflect, I find myself again, always, in this garden, at this hour of the evening, in your august presence.

Reality, ugly or beautiful as it may be, is something I cannot change

The universe and the void: I'll return to these two terms, between which swings the aim of literature, and which often seem to mean the same thing.

We'll invent new ways of being together.

Desires are already memories.

For years I have been coming to this library, and I explore it volume by volume, shelf by shelf, but I could demonstrate to you that I have done nothing but continue the reading of a single book.

How long are you going to let yourself be dragged passively by the plot? You had flung yourself into the action, filled with adventurous impulses: and then? Your function was quickly reduced to that of one who records situations decided by others, who submits to whims, finds himself involved in events that elude his control. Then what use is your role as protagonist to you? If you continue lending yourself to this game, it means that you, too, are an accomplice of the general mystification.

In the Ondariva gardens the branches spread out like the tentacles of extraordinary animals, and the plants on the ground opened up stars of fretted leaves like the green skins of reptiles, and waved feathery yellow bamboos with a rustle like paper.

Si una noche de invierno un viajero, fuera del poblado de Malbork, asomándose desde la abrupta costa sin temor al viento y al vértigo, mira hacia abajo donde la sombra se adensa en una red de líneas que se entrelazan, en una red de líneas que se intersecan sobre la alfombra de hojas iluminadas por la luna en torno a una fosa vacía, «¿Cuál historia espera su fin allá abajo?», pregunta, ansioso de escuchar el relato.

Clarice, the glorious city, has a tormented history. Several times it decayed, then burgeoned again, always keeping the first Clarice as an unparalleled model of every splendor, compared to which the city's present state can only cause more sighs at every fading of the stars.

Prendi la posizione più comoda: seduto, sdraiato, raggomitolato, coricato. Coricato sulla schiena, su un fianco, sulla pancia. In poltrona, sul divano, sulla sedia a dondolo, sulla sedia a sdraio, sul pouf. Sull'amaca, se hai un'amaca. Sul letto, naturalmente, o dentro il letto. Puoi anche metterti a testa in giù, in posizione yoga, col libro capovolto, si capisce.

th? là cu?i cùng, ph?i ch?ng chi?n tranh chính là cái cu?c chuy?n t? tay ng??i này sang tay ng??i kia các món ??, m?i lúc l?i méo mó thêm m?t chút?

the world was trying to change its old face and show its underbelly of earth and roots.

For the man who thought he was Man there is no salvation.

onsuz yapamayaca??n bir ?eyi kenara b?rakmay? bir kez ba?ard???nda, bir ba?ka ?ey olmadan da yapabildi?ini, sonra bir ba?ka ?eyden de s?yr?labildi?ini göreceksin.

But already ships were vanishing over the horizon and I was left behind, in this world of ours full of responsibilities and will-o'-the-wisps.

Erst wenn man die Oberfläche der Dinge kennen gelernt hat, kann man sich aufmachen, um herauszufinden, was darunter sein mag. Doch die Oberfläche der Dinge ist unerschöpflich.

my love now knew only the heart-rending nostalgia for what it lacked: a where, a surrounding, a before, an after.

Now that the book is finished, I know that this was not a hallucination, a sort of professional malady, but the confirmation of something I already suspected—folktales are real.

If there is nothing that needs correcting in the world memory, the only thing left to do is to correct reality where it doesn't agree with that memory.