Quotes from Italo Calvino

?nsanlar on bir ay boyunca kenti seviyorlar, kente toz kondurmuyorlard?; gökdelenler, otomatik sigara sat?c?lar?, panoramik perdeli sinemalar sürekli bir çekicilik kayna?? say?l?yordu. Bu duyguyu kesinlikle payla?mayan tek ki?i ise Marcovaldo idi.

I thought: "Perhaps Adelma is the city where you arrive dying and where each finds again the people he has known. This means I, too, am dead." And I also thought: "This means the beyond is not happy.

Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have function." — Italo Calvino

If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop

Ci si mette a scrivere di lena, ma c'è un'ora in cui la penna non gratta che polveroso inchiostro, e non vi scorre più una goccia di vita, e la vita è tutta fuori, fuori dalla finestra, fuori di te, e ti sembra che mai più potrai rifugiarti nella pagina che scrivi, aprire un altro mondo, fare un salto.[...] scrivendo non mi sono cambiata in bene, ho solo consumato un po' d'ansiosa incosciente giovinezza.

Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavias inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long.

You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.

When the human realm seems doomed to heaviness, I feel the need to fly like Perseus into some other space. I am not talking about escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I feel the need to change my approach, to look at the world from a different angle, with different logic, different methods of knowing and proving. The images of lightness I'm looking for shouldn't let themselves dissolve as dreams do in the reality of the present and future . .

hasta que murió, sin haber comprendido, tras una vida entera dedicada a la fe, en qué creía, pero tratando de creer firmemente en ello hasta el final.

In the seed of the city of the just, a malignant seed is hidden, in its turn: the certainty and pride of being in the right -- and of being more just than the many others who call themselves more just than the just. This seed ferments in bitterness, rivalry, resentment; and the natural desire for revenge on the unjust is colored by a yearning to be in their place and to act as they do.

When examples of openness of thought come from a single ruler, they count for nothing, except to show that he alone can afford to be like that because he is king.

Is it enough to say you would like to live several lives simultaneously?

There are books I find likable, and books I can't bear, and I keep coming across them.

I know that every interpretation of a myth impoverishes and suffocates it; with myths, it's better not to rush things, better to let them settle in memory, pausing to consider their details, to ponder them without moving beyond the language of their images. The lesson we can draw from a myth lies within the literality of its story, not in what we add to it from without.

Polo: "You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours." Khan: "Or the question it asks you, forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx.

But it's nice to see the books all together. I love books…

Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.

Alte zile decât astea ale noastre nu sunt, pân? o s? intr?m în mormânt,[...]. De mi-o fi dat s? nu le irosesc, s? nu irosesc nimic din ce sunt ?i din ce-a? putea fi!

Io, invece, in mezzo a tanto fervore d'interezza, mi sentivo sempre più triste e manchevole. Alle volte uno si crede incompleto ed è soltanto giovane.

But by now all his stories are so saturated with falsehood that anything said about him is false. He's succeeded in this, at least.

Non ci può essere amore se non si è se stessi con tutte le proprie forze.

A distanza di tanti anni, devo dire che questo spirito, che permise ai partigiani di fare le cose meravigliose che fecero, resta ancor oggi, per muoversi nella contrastata realtà del mondo, un atteggiamento umano senza

Io tenevo dietro a Vug con l'animo diviso tra felicità e timore: felicità a vedere come ogni sostanza che componeva il mondo trovasse una sua forma definitiva e salda, e un timore ancora indeterminato che questo trionfare dell'ordine in fogge tanto varie potesse riprodurre su un'altra scala il disordine che ci eravamo appena lasciati alle spalle

only by having a clear idea what virtue is can I practice evil with a light heart.