Quotes from Italo Calvino

Good literature can be created only with something that is different from literature.

I don't believe chance can play a role in my literature.

I will start out this evening with an assertion: fantasy is a place where it rains.

Fantasy is like jam. . . . You have to spread it on a solid piece of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing . . . out of which you can't make anything.

Each sort of cheese reveals a pasture of a different green, under a different sky.