Quotes from Italo Calvino

academic envelope serves only to protect everything the story says and does not say, an inner afflatus always on the verge of being dispersed at contact with the air, the echo of a vanished knowledge revealed in the penumbra and in tacit allusions. Torn

The obstinacy on which power is based is never so fragile as in the moment of its triumph.

D'altro canto, c'era sempre la morale che bisogna continuare a fare quanto si può, giorno per giorno; nella politica come in tutto il resto della vita, per chi non è un balordo, contano quei due principî lì: non farsi mai troppe illusioni e non smettere di credere che ogni cosa che fai potrà servire.

I might say I am in love with each of those girls and at the same time I am sure of being in love always with her alone.

I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!

In other words, nobody really knew anything.

Il momento che più conta per me è quello che precede la lettura. Alle volte è il titolo che basta ad accendere in me il desiderio d'un libro che forse non esiste. Alle volte è l'incipit del libro, le prime frasi...Insomma: se a voi basta poco per mettere in moto l'immaginazione, a me basta ancor meno: la promessa della lettura.

Thus the days went by at Terralba, and our sensibilities became numbed, as we felt ourselves lost between an evil and a virtue equally inhuman.

Ma ogni momento della mia vita porta con sé un'accumulazione di fatti nuovi e ognuno di questi fatti nuovi porta con sé le sue conseguenze, cosicché più cerco di tornare al momento zero da cui sono partito più me ne allontano.

Lo que dirige el relato no es la voz: es el oído.

Gentlemen, first I must say that in books I like to read only what is written, and to connect the details with the whole, and consider readings as definite; and I like to keep one book distant from the other, each for what it has that is different and new; and I especially like books to be read from beginning to end. For awhile now, everything has been going wrong for me; it seems to me that in the world there now exists only stories that remain suspended or get lost along the way.

I sogni dei partigiani sono rari e corti, sogni nati dalle notti di fame, legati alla storia del cibo sempre poco e da dividere in tanti: sogni di pezzi di pane morsicati e poi chiusi in un cassetto

To plan a book — or an escape — the first thing to know is what to exclude.

L'uomo contento non aveva camicia.

For awhile now, everything has been going wrong for me; it seems to me that in the world there now exists only stories that remain suspended or get lost along the way.

Ancient beauty is powerless against new ugliness.

Similar stories are numerous and there are many variants, but none is that story. Can I have dreamed it? And yet I know I will have no peace until I have found it and find out how it ends.

Amid all the extraordinary events you were witness to in your lifetime, the most extraordinary was that everything went on, not that everything was collapsing?

God knows wherebthey are now, the people I receive instructions, or rather-let's come right out and say it-take orders. It is obvious I'm a subordinate.

What does my daughter have to do with crocodiles?

In the field of suppressed languages there are many now that attract more attention ... Basque ... Breton ... Romany.... They all sign up for those.... Not that they study the language: nobody wants to do that these days.... They want problems to debate, general ideas to connect with other general ideas. My colleagues adjust, follow the mainstream, give their courses titles like 'Sociology of Welsh,' 'Psycho-linguistics of Provençal."...

A los duelos suceden tarde o temprano acontecimientos alegres, es ley de vida.

I am the I of the present

O aspeto em que a cópula e a leitura mais se parecem é que dentro delas se abrem tempos e espaços diferentes do tempo e do espaço medíveis.