Italo Calvino Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest-for example, the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both-must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story.

  Italo Calvino

  Race, Break Off, Two

  25 Copy quote

• I had fallen in love. What I mean is: I had begun to recognize, to isolate the signs of one of those from the others, in fact I waited for these signs I had begun to recognize, I sought them, responded to those signs I awaited with other signs I made myself, or rather it was I who aroused them, these signs from her, which I answered with other signs of my own . . .

  Italo Calvino

  Mean, Facts, Made

  Italo Calvino (2014). “The Complete Cosmicomics”, p.168, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• To write well about the elegant world you have to know it and experience it to the depths of your being... what matters is not whether you love it or hate it, but only to be quite clear about your position regarding it.

  Italo Calvino

  Hate, Writing, What Matters

  Italo Calvino (2013). “Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985”, p.47, Princeton University Press

  9 Copy quote

• You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.

  Italo Calvino

  Expression, People, Mind

  Italo Calvino (2013). “Invisible Cities”, p.103, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book.

  Italo Calvino

  Book, Lines, Statistics

  Italo Calvino (2012). “If on a winter's night a traveler”, p.165, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

• …we can not love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.

  Italo Calvino

  Thinking, Disappear, Fragments

  Italo Calvino (2012). “If on a winter's night a traveler”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the night and gradually reacquire colors, but seem to cross meanwhile an uncertain limbo, faintly touched, just breathed on by light; the hour in which one is least certain of the world's existence.

  Italo Calvino

  Morning, Night, Light

  Italo Calvino (2012). “The Nonexistent Knight”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

  Italo Calvino

  Motivational, Travel, Lying

  11 Copy quote

• A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.

  Italo Calvino

  Book, Classic, Ancient

  Italo Calvino (2014). “Why Read the Classics?”, p.6, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

• Nobody looks at the moon in the afternoon, and this is the moment when it would most require our attention, since its existence is still in doubt.

  Italo Calvino

  Moon, Doubt, Looks

  Italo Calvino (1986). “Mr. Palomar”, p.42, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  11 Copy quote

• The people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping...something runs among them, an exchange of glances like lines that connect one figure with another and draw arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene.

  Italo Calvino

  Running, Stars, Moving

  9 Copy quote

• Revolutionaries are more formalistic than conservatives.

  Italo Calvino

  Revolution, Revolutionary

  18 Copy quote

• Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.

  Italo Calvino

  Book, Writing, Opportunity

  Italo Calvino (1976). “The Path to the Nest of Spiders”

  4 Copy quote

• How well I would write if I were not here!

  Italo Calvino

  Writing, Wells, Ifs

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• what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveller's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveller finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

  Italo Calvino

  Lying, Past, Journey

  10 Copy quote

• Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.

  Italo Calvino

  Memories, Cities, Redundant

  Italo Calvino (2013). “Invisible Cities”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.

  Italo Calvino

  Inevitability Of Death, Two, Continuity Of Life

  Italo Calvino (2010). “If On A Winter's Night A Traveller”, p.259, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• So began their love, the boy happy and amazed, she happy and not surprised at all (nothing happens by chance to girls). It was the love so long awaited by Cosimo and which had now inexplicably arrived, and so lovely that he could not imagine how he had even thought it lovely before. And the thing newest to him was that it was so simple, and the boy at that moment thought it must be like that always.

  Italo Calvino

  Girl, Boys, Simple

  4 Copy quote

• What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

  Italo Calvino

  Inspiration, Finding The One, Genius

  Italo Calvino (2017). “The Uses of Literature”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

• One reads alone, even in another's presence.

  Italo Calvino

  Italo Calvino (2012). “If on a winter's night a traveler”, p.159, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins.

  Italo Calvino

  Cities, Shapes, Ends

  17 Copy quote

• If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-dimensional, or, rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable. What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.

  Italo Calvino

  Sex, Reading, Space

  Italo Calvino (2010). “If On A Winter's Night A Traveller”, p.156, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• Something must always remain that eludes us ... For power to have an object on which it can be exercised, a space in which to stretch out its arms ... As long as I know there exists in the world someone who does tricks only for the love of the trick, as long as I know there is a woman who loves reading for reading's sake, I can convince myself that the world continues ... And every evening I, too, abandon myself to reading, like that distant unknown woman.

  Italo Calvino

  Reading, Elude Us, Space

  8 Copy quote

• Whether there is such a thing as Reality, of which the various levels are only partial aspects, or whether there are only levels, is something that literature cannot decide. Literature recognizes rather the *reality of the levels.*

  Italo Calvino

  Reality, Literature, Levels

  10 Copy quote

• Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.

  Italo Calvino

  Stars, Fall, Sunset

  Italo Calvino (2013). “Invisible Cities”, p.135, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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