Quotes from Italo Calvino

In short, I conceived of the eye-encephalon link as a kind of tunnel dug from the outside by the force of what was ready to become image, rather than from within by the intention of picking up any old image.

a ?ycie to tylko tarzanie si? mi?dzy ?ó?kiem a trumn? [...]

in everything that was most remote from her lay the value of having her, the sense of his being the one who had her.

The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.

I thought only of the Earth. It was the Earth that caused each of us to be that someone he was rather than someone else; Up there wrested from the earth, it was as if I were no longer that I, nor she that She for me.

Capì questo: che le associazioni rendono l'uomo più forte e mettono in risalto le doti migliori delle singole persone, e danno la gioia che raramente s'ha restando per proprio conto, di vedere quanta gente c'è onesta e brava e capace e per cui vale la pena di vedere cose buone (mentre vivendo per proprio conto capita più spesso il contrario, di vedere l'altra faccia della gente, quella per cui bisogna tener sempre la mano alla guardia della spada)

Al llegar a cada nueva ciudad el viajero encuentra un pasado suyo que ya no sabía que tenía: la extrañeza de lo que no eres o no posees más te espera al paso en los lugares extraños y no poseídos.

sólo intentaba hacer bien lo que le parecía bien hacer,

My?li te zaprawione by?y pewn? gorycz? ludzi starych, którzy wi?cej cierpi? nad utrat? rzeczy dawnych, ni? ciesz? si? z nadej?cia nowych.

I ja tak?e chc? tylko jednego: by? kim?, kto wie, czego chce!

Le imprese più ardite vanno vissute con l'animo più semplice.

La realidad fotografiada asume en seguida un carácter nostálgico, de alegría desaparecida en alas del tiempo, un caracter conmemorativo, aunque sea una foto de anteayer.

Viaggi per rivivere il tuo passato? - era a questo punto la domanda del Kan, che poteva anche essere formulata cosi: - Viaggi per ritrovare il tuo futuro? E la risposta di Marco: - L'altrove è uno specchio in negativo. Il viaggiatore riconosce il poco che è suo, scoprendo il molto che non ha avuto e non avrà.

My empire has grown too far toward the outside. It is time,' the Khan thought, 'for it to grow within itself.

Viaggi per rivivere il tuo passato? - era a questo punto la domanda del Kan, che poteva anche essere formulata così: - Viaggi per ritrovare il tuo futuro? E la risposta di Marco: - L'altrove è uno specchio in negativo. Il viaggiatore riconosce il poco che è suo, scoprendo il molto che non ha avuto e non avrà.

Mais je fais une chose tout à fait bonne: je vis dans les arbres

Se alzi un muro, pensa a ciò che resta fuori!

And at the bottom of each of those eyes I lived, or rather another me lived, one of the images of me, and it encountered the image of her, the most faithful image of her, in that beyond which opens up, past the semi-liquid sphere of the irises, in the darkness of the pupils, the mirrored hall of the retinas, in our true element which extends without shores, without boundaries. Excerpt

But what enhanced for Kublai every event or piece of news reported by his inarticulate informer was the space that remained around it, a void not filled with words. The descriptions of cities Marco Polo visited had this virtue: you could wander through them in thought, become lost, stop and enjoy the cool air, or run off.

One sees one's past more and more clearly as time goes by.

Traveler's past changes according to the route he has followed

Her way of living in the world, filled with interest in what the world can give her, dismisses the egocentric abyss of the suicide's novel that ends by sinking into itself.

It is in this that the public man's ascendance over the crowd consists: he is the man who will have a public death, the man whose death we are sure to be there for, all together, and that is why so long as he lives he will enjoy our interested, anticipatory concern.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say