Quotes from Italo Calvino

the stone wanted to inform me that our substance was common, and therefore something of what constitutes my person would remain, would not be lost with the end of the world; a communication will still be possible in the desert bereft of life, bereft of my life and all memory of me.

Your reading is no longer solitary; you think of the Other Reader, who at this same moment, is also opening the book.

Bütün öykülerin ana fikrinin iki çehresi vard?r: hayat?n devam?; ölümün kaç?n?lmazl???.

Si alguna vez te conviertes en la mitad de ti mismo, muchacho, y te lo deseo, comprenderás cosas que escapan a la normal inteligencia de los cerebros enteros. Habrás perdido la mitad de ti y del mundo, pero la mitad que quede será mil veces más profunda y valiosa. Y también tú querrás que todo esté demediado y desgarrado a tu imagen, porque belleza y sabiduría y justicia existen sólo en aquello que está hecho a trozos.

This sense of concreteness that you perceived at the very first line bears in it also the sense of loss, the vertigo of dissolution, and you realize that you perceived this, too, alert Reader that you are, from the first page, when though pleased with the precision of this writing, you sensed that, to tell the truth, everything was slip through your fingers…

half-respected conventions spread insecurity and incoherence of behavior rather than freedom and frankness.

Déblayer la neige n'est pas un jeu d'enfant, surtout quand on a l'estomac presque vide, mais pour Marcovaldo, la neige était comme une amie, comme un élément qui annulait les murs qui emprisonnaient sa vie.

C'è una linea di confine: da una parte ci sono quelli che fanno i libri, dall'altra quelli che li leggono. Io voglio restare una di quelli che li leggono, perciò sto attenta a tenermi sempre al di qua di quella linea. Se no, il piacere disinteressato di leggere finisce, o comunque si trasforma in un'altra cosa, che non è quello che voglio io.

This – some say – confirms the hypothesis that each man bears in his mind a city made only of differences, a city without figures and without form, and the individual cities fill it up.

Alien was my room, the small trunk that was my luggage, the view from the little window. I feared I could no longer establish a relationship with anyone or anything.

I like to know that books exist that I will still be able to read…" she says, sure that existent objects, concrete albeit unknown, must correspond to the strength of her desire. How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a book that does not yet exist, but which, since she wants it, cannot fail to exist ?

If the cavaliere, heading toward the pirate ship, meant to reach this Zaira, she must be a woman who was there in those Ottoman countries. Maybe his whole life had been dominated by longing for that woman; maybe she was the image of lost happiness that he pursued by raising bees or designing canals.

Dall'introduzione sul ruolo sociale di lettrice per passione disinteressata. È un ruolo sociale cui credo, e che è il presupposto del mio lavoro, non solo di questo libro. Né mi dimentico neanche per un minuto (dato che vivo di diritti d'autore) che il lettore è acquirente, che il libro è un oggetto che si vende sul mercato. Chi crede di poter prescindere dall'economicità dell'esistenza e da tutto ciò che essa comporta, non ha mai avuto il mio rispetto.

In her voice you seek the confirmation of your need to cling to the things that exist, to read what is written and nothing else, dispelling the ghosts that escape your grasp.

So, I am relegating the bosom again to the semidarkness where centuries of sexo-maniacal puritanism and of desire considered sin have kept it. . . .

Contemporaries cannot be good judges.

Il primo libro sarebbe meglio non averlo mai scritto. Finché il primo libro non è scritto, si possiede quella libertà di cominciare che si può usare una sola volta nella vita, il primo libro già ti definisce mentre tu in realtà sei ancora lontano dall'esser definito; e questa definizione dovrai portartela dietro per la vita, cercando di darne conferma o approfondimento o correzione o smentita, ma mai più riuscendo a prescinderne.

The only truth I can write is that of the instant I am living.

But in essence they had both remained in the era of the Wars of Succession, she with artillery in her head, he with genealogical trees; she who dreamed for us children a rank in an army, it didn't matter which, he who saw us instead married to some grand duchess elector of the empire . . . Despite all this, they were excellent parents, but so distracted that the two of us were left to grow up almost on our own.

I have dizzy spells when I least expect them, even if there is no danger in sight…Altitude or depth makes no difference…if I gaze at the sky at night, and I think of the distance of the stars…Or even in the daytime…if I were to lie down here, for example, with my eyes facing up, my head would swim…" And she points to the clouds passing swiftly, driven by the wind. She speaks of her head swimming as of a temptation that somehow attracts her.

Tenere i piedi sollevati è la prima condizione per godere della lettura.

Il passato (proprio per il fatto d'avere un'immagine così compiuta nella quale non si poteva pensare di cambiar nulla come in quel dormitorio) gli pareva una gran trappola. E il futuro, quando ci se ne fa un'immagine (cioè lo si annette al passato), diventava una trappola esso pure.

For some time now, every novel I begin to write is exhausted shortly after the beginning, as if I had already said everything I have to say.

El viajero reconoce lo poco que es suyo al descubrir lo mucho que no ha tenido y no tendrá.