Quotes from Italo Calvino

I was yearning to follow him, especially now that I knew he shared in the enterprises of that raggedy gang of boys, and it seemed to me that he had opened the gates of a new kingdom, to look at not with fearful distrust but with comradely enthusiasm.

Al ver a veces a mi hermano perderse en un viejo nogal inmenso, como en un palacio de muchos pisos e innumerables estancias, me entraban ganas de imitarlo, de ir a vivir allá arriba; tal es la fuerza y la seguridad que ese árbol pone en ser árbol, su obstinación en ser pesado y duro, que se le nota incluso en sus hojas.

Inutilmente chiudete le vostre porte, - questa era la risposta che ci si poteva attendere dalla portatrice d'acqua, - io mi guardo bene dall'entrare in una Città che è tutta di metallo compatto. Noi abitatori del fluido visitiamo solo gli elementi che scorrono e si mescolano.

the planet, as with a person of difficult character. (Unless the difficulty of character is all on Mr. Palomar's side: he tries in vain to escape subjectivity by taking refuge among the celestial bodies.)

as long as I know there is a woman who loves reading for reading's sake, I can convince myself that the world continues....

If what I am writing were to appear on the polished surface of the page she is reading, it would rasp like a fingernail on a pane, and she would fling the book away in horror.

O bella! Questo suddito qui che c'è ma non sa d'esserci e quel mio paladino là che sa d'esserci e invece non c'è. Fanno un bel paio, ve lo dico io!

e la guerra cos'è poi se non questo passarsi di mano in mano roba sempre più ammaccata?

You try to picture how the world might appear, this world dense with writing that surrounds us on all sides, to someone who has learned not to read.

I continue to gaze into the valley bottom of the memory. And my fear now is that as soon as a memory forms it immediately takes on the wrong light, mannered, sentimental as war and youth always are, becomes a piece of narrative written in the style of the time, which can't tell us how things really were but only how we thought we saw them, thought we said them. I don't know if I am destroying the past or saving it, the past hidden in that besieged village.

No, Ludmilla has always looked for places where she could hide." "Who from?" "Oh, from everybody.

Dal raccontare al passato, e dal presente che m prendeva la mono nei tratti concitati, ecco, o futuro, sono salita in sella al tuo cavallo. Quali nuovi stendardi mi levi incontro dai pennoni delle torri di città non ancora fondate? quali fumi di devastazioni dai castelli e dai giardini che amavo? quali impreviste età dell'oro prepari, tu malpadroneggiato, tu foriero di tesori pagati a caro prezzo, tu mio regno da conquistare, futuro...

It is only when they have the photos before their eyes that they seem to take tangible possession of the day they spent, only then that the mountain stream, the movement of the child with his pail, the glint of sun on the wife's legs take on the irrevocability of what has been and can no longer be doubted.

It was to slough off a burden of nostalgia that you went so far away!" he exclaimed, or else: "You return from your voyages with a cargo of regrets!

Kim ise ö?renci, en büyük arzusu nedenlerle sonuçlar? belli bir mant??a, kesinli?e oturtmak, ne var ki zihnine her an yan?tlanmam?? sorular ü?ü?üyor.

Memory truly counts — for an individual, a society, a culture — only if it holds together the imprint of the past and the plan for the future, if it allows one to do things without forgetting what one wanted to do, and to become without ceasing to be, to be without ceasing to become.

You pick your way past young men and girls sitting on the steps, you wander bewildered among those austere walls which students' hands have arabesqued with outsize capital writing and detailed graffiti, just as the cavemen felt the need to decorate the cold walls of their caves to become masters of the tormenting mineral alienness, to make them familiar, empty them into their own inner space, annex them to the physical reality of living.

Marco Polo descreve uma ponte, pedra por pedra. – Mas qual é a pedra que sustenta a ponte? — pergunta Kublai Khan. – A ponte não é sustentada por esta ou aquela pedra — responde Marco —, mas pela curva do arco que estas formam. Kublai Khan permanece em silêncio, refletindo. Depois acrescenta: – Por que falar em pedras? Só o arco me interessa. Polo responde: – Sem pedras, o arco não existe. (p. 84)

each door you open is the wrong one, you withdraw in confusion, you seem to be lost in the book with white pages, unable to get out of it.

Your footsteps follow not what is outside the eyes, but what is within, buried, erased.

Quando sarai stanco di star lì cambierai idea! - gli gridò. - Non cambierò mai idea, - fece mio fratello, dal ramo. - Ti farò vedere io, appena scendi! - - E io non scenderò più! - E mantenne la parola.

This thought has always filled me with terror: that I might be one of those people, that I might be only one of those people.

mi sembra che il linguaggio venga sempre usato in modo approssimativo, casuale, sbadato, e ne provo un fastidio intollerabile.

The only contact we could have with the void was through this little the void had produced as quintessence of its own emptiness; the only image we had of the void was our own poor universe. All the void we would ever know was there, in the relativity of what is, for even the void had been no more than a relative void,a void secretly shot with veins and temptations to be something, given that in a moment of crisis at its own nothingness it had been able to give rise to the universe.