Quotes from Italo Calvino

Si arriva a un momento della vita in cui tra la gente che si è conosciuta i morti sono più dei vivi. E la mente si rifiuta di accettare altre fisionomie, altre espressioni: su tutte le facce nuove che incontra, imprime i vecchi calchi, per ognuna trova la maschera che s'adatta di più.

My brother maintains," I answered, "that those who wish to look carefully at the earth should stay at the necessary distance," and Voltaire very much admired the answer.

That's how it is: everything women have been told about love has been wrong. They've been told all sorts of things, but all wrong. And their experiences, all imprecise. And yet, they trust the things they're told, not the experiences. [...] And yet, it's easier for women. Life flows in them, a great river, in them, the perpetuators, nature is sure and mysterious, in them.

Il suo segreto è il modo in cui la vista scorre su figure che si succedono come in una partitura musicale nella quale non si può cambiare spostare nessuna nota

A model is by definition that in which nothing has to be changed, that which works perfectly; whereas reality, as we see clearly, does not work and constantly falls to pieces; so we must force it, more or less roughly, to assume the form of the model.

That was a time when I didn't give a damn about anything, the period when I came to settle in this city. "Settle" is the wrong term. I had no desire to be settled in any sense;

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, though I continue, without a moment's pause, moving up a river green with crocodiles or counting the barrels of salted fish being lowered into the hold.

Brzask] jest to pora, kiedy przedmioty trac? konsystencj? cienia, jak? darzy?a je noc, i odzyskuj? po trochu w?a?ciwe sobie barwy; ale najpierw przechodz? jeszcze przez co? niby stref? po?redni?, niejasn?, zaledwie mu?ni?te czy raczej otoczone doko?a ?wiat?em: o tej porze mniej ni? kiedykolwiek ma si? pewno?? istnienia ?wiata.

I expect readers to read in my books something I didn't know, but I can expect it only from those who expect to read something they didn't know.

What if it were as they say? If, while I believe I am writing in fun, what I write were really dictated by the extraterrestrials?

Stations are all alike; it doesn't matter if the lights cannot illuminate beyond their blurred halo, all of this is a setting you know by heart, with the odor of train that lingers even after all the trains have left, the special odor of stations after the last train has left. The lights of the station and the sentences you are reading seem to have the job of dissolving more than of indicating the things that surface from a veil of darkness and fog.

Quello che vorresti é l'aprirsi d'uno spazio e d'un tempo astratti ed assoluti in cui muoverti seguendo una traiettoria esatta e tesa; ma quando ti sembra di riuscirci t'accorgi d'esser fermo, bloccato, costretto a ripetere tutto da capo.

Los futuros no realizados son sólo ramas del pasado: ramas secas.

an archer, the moment he thinks he's experienced, is lost; every lion we encounter in our brief life is different from every other lion; woe to us if we stop to make comparisons, to deduce our movements from norms and premises.

The taste for the spontaneous, natural, lifelike snapshot kills spontaneity, drives away the present. Photographed reality immediately takes on a nostalgic character, of joy fled on the wings of time, a commemorative quality, even if the picture was taken the day before yesterday. And the life that you live in order to photograph it is already, at the outset, a commemoration of itself." - from "The Adventure of a Photographer

I will quote Cioran (who is not yet a classic but will become one): "While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning a tune on the flute. 'What good will it do you,' they asked, 'to know this tune before you die?

Ba???la beni efendimiz: er geç o r?ht?ma ç?kaca??m ku?kusuz," der Marco, "ama dönüp sana anlatamayaca??m onu. Böyle bir kent var, ve de basit bir s?rr? var: yaln?z gidi?leri bilir, dönü?leri bilmez.

Undertakings based on an inner tenacity have to be mute and obscure; one has only to declare or glory in them and it all appears silly, without meaning, even petty.

So, with my thoughts following my father's footsteps through the countryside, I fell asleep; and he never knew that he had had me so close to him.

Soon space became filled again, and dense, like a vineyard just before vintage time, and we flew on, escaping from one another, my galaxy fleeing the younger ones as it had the older, and young and old fleeing us.

Yolcu sahip oldu?u tenhay? tan?r, sahip olmad??? ve olamayaca?? kalabal??? ke?federek.

Chi comanda al racconto non è la voce: è l'orecchio

Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes.

faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.