logo

Quotes About Inspiration

The only books I recognize as mine are those I must still write.
~ 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
In museums I always enjoy stopping at the Saint Jeromes.
~ Italo Calvino
There: the white butterfly has crossed the whole valley, and from the reader's book has flown here, to light on the page I am writing.
~ Italo Calvino
Fantasy is a place where it rains.
~ Italo Calvino
Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature. Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement.
~ Italo Calvino
The book should be the written counterpart of the unwritten world; its subject should be what does not exist and cannot exist except when written, but whose absence is obscurely felt by that which exists, in its own incompleteness.
~ Italo Calvino
Il libro dovrebb'essere la controparte scritta del mondo non scritto; la sua materia dovrebbe essere ciò che non c'è né potrà esserci se non quando sarà scritto, ma di cui ciò che c'è sente oscuramente il vuoto nella propria incompletezza.
~ Italo Calvino
What if it were as they say? If, while I believe I am writing in fun, what I write were really dictated by the extraterrestrials?
~ Italo Calvino
if you ask an inhabitant of Zenobia to describe his vision of a happy life, it is always a city like Zenobia that he imagines […], a Zenobia perhaps quite different, a-flutter with banners and ribbons, but always derived by combining elements of that first model.
~ Italo Calvino
l'arte di scriver storie sta nel saper tirare fuori da quel nulla che si è capito della vita tutto il resto. ma finita la pagina si riprende la vita e ci s'accorge che quel che si sapeva è proprio un nulla.
~ Italo Calvino
Will I ever be able to say, "Today it writes," just like "Today it rains," "Today it is windy"?
~ 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
La fantasia è una specie di macchina elettronica che tiene conto di tutte le combinazioni possibili e sceglie quelle che rispondono ad un fine, o che semplicemente sono le più interessanti, piacevoli, divertenti.
~ Italo Calvino
Most of the books I have written and those I intend to write originate from the thought that it will be impossible for me to write a book of that kind: when I have convinced myself that such a book is completely beyond my capacities of temperament or skill, I sit down and start writing it.
~ Italo Calvino
She's there every day,' the writer says. 'Every time I'm about to sit down at my desk I feel the need to look at her. Who knows what she's reading? I know it isn't a book of mine, and instinctively I suffer at the thought, I feel the jealousy of my books, which would like to be read the way she reads. I never tire of watching her: she seems to live in a sphere suspended in another time and another space.
~ Italo Calvino
La letteratura vive solo se si pone degli obbiettivi smisurati, anche al di là d'ogni possibilità di realizzazione.
~ Italo Calvino
Una poesia vive anche per il potere d'irradiare ipotesi divagazioni associazioni d'idee in territori lontani, o meglio di richiamare e agganciare a sé idee di varia provenienza, organizzandole in una mobile rete di riferimenti e rifrazioni, come attraverso un cristallo.
~ Italo Calvino
La pagina ha il suo bene solo quando la volti e c'è la vita dietro che spinge e scompiglia tutti i fogli del libro. La penna corre spinta dallo stesso piacere che ti fa correre le strade. Il capitolo che attacchi e non sai ancora quale storia racconterà è come l'angolo che volterai uscendo dal convento e non sai se ti metterà faccia a faccia con un drago, uno stuolo barbaresco, un'isola incantata, un nuovo amore.
~ Italo Calvino
I have to say that most of the books I've written and those I have it in mind to write originate in the idea that writing such a book seemed impossible to me. When I'm convinced that a certain type of book is completely beyond the capacities of my temperament and my technical skills, I sit down at my desk and start writing it.
~ Italo Calvino
Ogni libro nasce in presenza di altri libri, in rapporto e confronto ad altri libri.
~ Italo Calvino
Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly.
~ Italo Calvino
One summer day, Eugenio Scalfari and I created an entire philosophical system: the philosophy of the élan vital . The next day we discovered that it had already been invented by Bergson.
~ Italo Calvino
Le fiabe sono vere/Folktales are are real
~ Italo Calvino