Quotes from Italo Calvino

Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches. "Journeys to relive your past?" was the Khan's question at this point, a question which could also have been formulated: "Journeys to recover your future?" And Marco's answer was: "Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.

the presence of the others reassured me, created an inhabited zone around me, freed me from the fear of being an alarming exception, which I would have been if the fact of existing had been my fate alone, a kind of exile.

It was her always insatiable reading that managed to uncover truths hidden in the most barefaced fake, falsity with no attenuating circumstances in words claiming to be the most truthful.

Pitrè did in folklore what Verga had done in literature; he was the first folklorist to transcribe not only traditional motifs or linguistic usages, but the inner poetry of the stories.

Fai bene a esser geloso. Ma tu pretendi di sottomettere la gelosia alla ragione. - Certo: così la rendo più efficace. - Tu ragioni troppo. Perché mai l'amore va ragionato? - Per amarti di più. Ogni cosa, a farla ragionando, aumenta il suo potere. - Vivi sugli alberi e hai la mentalità di un notaio con la gotta. - Le imprese più ardite vanno vissute con l'animo più semplice.

Messia, like a typical Sicilian storyteller, fills her narrative with color, nature, objects; she conjures up magic, but frequently bases it on realism, on a picture of the condition of the common people; hence her imaginative language, but a language firmly rooted in commonsensical speech and sayings.

How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person!

Boys, the noodles I would make for you!

Insomma, l'amore per questo suo elemento arboreo seppe farlo diventare, com'è di tutti gli amori veri, anche spietato e doloroso, che ferisce e recide per far ricrescere e dar forma.

Just take a look around. The whole universe is…let's say it's in a transitional phase…" And they pointed to the sky, where the constellations have become unrecognizable, here clotted, there rarefied, the celestial map in upheaval, stars exploding one after the other, while more stars emit a final flicker and die.

L'Abate passò il resto dei suoi giorni tra carcere e convento in continui atti d'abiura, finché non morì, senza aver capito, dopo una vita intera dedicata alla fede, in che cosa mai credesse, ma cercando di credervi fermamente fino all'ultimo.

yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.

Volare è il contrario del viaggio: attraversi una discontinuità dello spazio, sparisci nel vuoto, accetti di non essere in nessun luogo per una durata che è anch'essa una specie di vuoto nel tempo; poi riappari, in un luogo e in un momento senza rapporto col dove e col quando in cui eri sparito.

Reading," he says, "is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined, or because it was once and is no longer, past, lost, unattainable, in the land of the dead...

For a couple of pages now you have been reading on, and this would be the time to tell you clearly whether this station where I have got off is a station of the past or a station of today; instead the sentences continue to move in vagueness, grayness, a kind of noman's land of experience reduced to the lowest common denominator. Watch out: it is surely a method of involving you gradually, capturing you in the story before you realize it— a trap.

Vorsicht! Vorsicht! Ora casca, poverino! - esclamò piena d'ansia nostra madre, che ci avrebbe visto volentieri alla carica sotto le cannonate, ma intanto stava in pena per ogni nostro gioco.

Marco Polo describe un puente, piedra por piedra. —¿Pero cuál es la piedra que sostiene el puente? —pregunta Kublai Kan. —El puente no está sostenido por esta piedra o por aquella —responde Marco—, sino por la línea del arco que ellas forman. Kublai permanece silencioso, reflexionando. Después añade: —¿Por qué me hablas de las piedras? Lo único que me importa es el arco. Polo responde: —Sin piedras no hay arco.

The world is reduced to a sheet of paper on which nothing can be written except abstract words.

Il modo in cui le lumache eccitavano la macabra fantasia di nostra sorella, ci spinse, mio fratello e me, a una ribellione, che era insieme di solidarietà con le povere bestie straziate, di disgusto per il sapore delle lumache cotte e d'insofferenza per tutto e per tutti [...].

Hai paura che le nostre anime caschino nelle mani del Diavolo? - avrebbero chiesto quelli della Città. - No: che non abbiate anima da dargli.

The second industrial revolution doesn't present us, as the first did, with overwhelming images of rolling mills or molten steel, but rather with bits of information that flow, as electrical impulses, through circuits. We still have machines made of steel, but they now obey bits that are weightless.

There is never a moonlight night but wicked ideas in evil souls writhe like serpents in nests, and charitable ones sprout lilies of renunciation and dedication.

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

My sister always says she loves novels where you feel an elemental strength, primordial, telluric. That's exactly what she says: telluric