logo

Quotes About Isolation

The naked man had lost hope now; he would never be able to return to the earth's surface;he would never leave the bottom of this shaft, and he would go mad there drinking blood and eating human flesh, without ever being able to die. Up there, against the sky, there were good angels with ropes, and bad angels with grenades and rifles, and a big old man with a white beard who waved his arms but could not save him.
~ Italo Calvino
All places communicate instantly with all other places, a sense of isolation is felt only during the trip between one place and the other, that is, when you are in no place.
~ Italo Calvino
??c là ni?m cô ??n.
~ Italo Calvino
But already ships were vanishing over the horizon and I was left behind, in this world of ours full of responsibilities and will-o'-the-wisps.
~ Italo Calvino
One gets used to persisting in one's habits, to finding oneself isolated for good reasons, to putting up with the discomfort that this causes, to finding the right way to hold on to positions which are not shared by the majority.
~ Italo Calvino
nh?ng có lúc ngòi bút ch? rào r?o b?i m?c, không l?n ch?y b?ng m?t gi?t ??i, và cu?c ??i thì toàn b? ?n goài kia, bên ngoài ô c?a s?, bên ngoài b?n, và b?n c?m th?y mình s? không bao gi? còn có th? n??ng náu n?i trang gi?y b?n ?ang vi?t
~ Italo Calvino
Cosimo sat in the ash tree every day, gazing at the meadow as if he could read in it something that had long been consuming him inside: the very idea of distance, of the gap that can't be bridged, of the wait that can last longer than life.
~ Italo Calvino
It's all very well for me to tell myself there are no provincial cities any more and perhaps there never were any: all places communicate instantly with all other places, a sense of isolation is felt only during the trip between one place and the other, that is, when you are in no place.
~ Italo Calvino
A stone, a figure, a sign, a word reaching us isolated from its context is only that stone, figure, sign, or word: we can try to define them, to describe them as they are, and no more than that; whether, beside the face they show us, they also have a hidden face, is not for us to know. The refusal to comprehend more than what the stones show us is perhaps the only way to evince respect for their secret; trying to guess is a presumption, a betrayal of that true, lost meaning.
~ Italo Calvino
And I see the houses of the human race perched on the edge of the sea, shipwrecked in their false neighborliness.
~ Italo Calvino
ma Pin non ha voglia di giocare e continua a camminare a perdifiato, con una tristezza che gli annuvola la gola.
~ Italo Calvino
Apart from religious ceremonies, triduums, novenas, gardening, harvesting, vintaging, whippings, slavery, incest, fires, hangings, invasion, sacking, rape and pestilence, we have had no experience. What can a poor nun know of the world?
~ Italo Calvino
And a keen jealousy invades me, not of other people, but of that me made of ink and periods and commas, who wrote the novels I will write no more, the author who continues to enter the privacy of this young woman, while I, I here and now, with the physical energy I feel surging, much more reliable than the creative impulse, I am separated from her by the immense distance of a keyboard and a white page on the roller.
~ Italo Calvino
Certo il costo da pagare è alto ma dobbiamo accettarlo: non poterci distinguere dai tanti segnali che passano per questa via, ognuno con un suo significato che resta nascosto e indecifrabile perché fuori di qui non c'è più nessuno capace di riceverci e d'intenderci.
~ Italo Calvino
Cosimo si gettò nel folto: avrebbe voluto che fosse mille volte più folto, una valanga di foglie e rami e spini e caprifogli e capelveneri da affondarci e sprofondarci e solo dopo essercisi del tutto sommerso cominciare a capire se era felice o folle di paura.
~ Italo Calvino
There is a place where spiders make their nests. Only Pin knows it. He's the only one in the whole valley, perhaps in the whole area. No other boy except Pin has ever heard of spiders that make nests. Perhaps one day Pin will find a friend, a real friend, who understands him and whom he can understand, and then to him, and only to him, will he show the place where the spiders have their lairs.
~ Italo Calvino
Though I leave the house as little as possible, I have the impression that someone is disturbing my papers. More than once I have discovered that some pages were missing from my manuscripts. A few days afterward I would find the pages in their place again. But often I no longer recognize my manuscripts, as if I had forgotten what I had written, or as if overnight I were so changed that no longer recognized myself in the self of yesterday.
~ Italo Calvino
Vuoto separazione e attesa, questo siamo.
~ Italo Calvino
Il senso d'isolamento lo si prova soltanto durante il tragitto da un luogo all'altro, cioè quando non si è in nessun luogo.
~ Italo Calvino
Praise be to the stars that implode. A new freedom opens up within them: annulled from space, exonerated from time, existing, at last, for themselves alone and no longer in relation to all the rest, perhaps only they can be sure they really exist.
~ Italo Calvino
No, Ludmilla has always looked for places where she could hide." "Who from?" "Oh, from everybody.
~ Italo Calvino
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.
~ Italo Calvino
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.
~ Italo Calvino
Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves.
~ Italo Calvino