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Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino Quotes

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Famous Italo Calvino Quotes

“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.”

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Author:Italo Calvino
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“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

IfsWayGivingFirstsTwoTogetherFormSufferingEasySpaceAcceptingDemandConstantEndureMidstTwo WaysApprehensionVigilanceInfernoBeing TogetherLive Every Day
Author:Italo Calvino
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“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.”

PeopleMomentsCharacterEyeRunningMovingUsedStarsLinesImagineStreetsFiguresSceneThousandConversationDrawsMeetingsSurpriseSeekingStrangerCombinationEncountersBitesLocksStoppingGlancesArrowsCaressTrianglesNever Stopping
Author:Italo Calvino
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“For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.”

FirstsDifferentNamesCitiesOne ThingReturnDeserveFirst TimeTrappedEnteringDifferent Names
Book:Invisible Cities
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“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.”

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Author:Italo Calvino
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“Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don't mean escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification.”

ThinkingWorldShouldBelieveLooksMeanDifferentDreamSeemsHumanityI BelieveSpaceCryPerspectiveBattleApproachLogicMethodIrrationalEscapingCognitionDifferent PerspectiveWholeheartedlyHeavinessVerificationBattle CryPerseus
Author:Italo Calvino
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“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice -- they won't hear you otherwise -- "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything: just hope they'll leave you alone.”

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Book:If On A Winter's Night A Traveller
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“What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious.”

BelieveWellsMayStillsBookPleasureRiskFieldsSeriousLuckyExpectationsAreasDisappointmentGrantsDeniedUnlucky
Book:If On A Winter's Night A Traveller
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“Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they area dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.”

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Author:Italo Calvino
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“There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to count—leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries”

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Author:Italo Calvino
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“New York is perhaps the only place in America where you feel at the centre and not at the margins, in the provinces, so for that reason I prefer its horror to this privileged beauty, its enslavement to the freedoms which remain local and privileged and very particularized, and which do not represent a genuine antithesis.”

FeelsReasonAmericaNew YorkHorrorGenuineLocalsPrivilegedCentreMarginsProvincesEnslavementAntithesis
Book:Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings
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“You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.”

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Book:If on a winter's night a traveler
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“I could distinguish the shape of her bosom, her arms, her thighs, just as I remember them now, just as now, when the Moon has become that flat, remote circle, I still look for her as soon as the first sliver appears in the sky, and the more it waxes, the more clearly I imagine I can see her, her or something of her, but only her, in a hundred, a thousand different vistas, she who makes the Moon the Moon and, whenever she is full, sets the dogs to howling all night long, and me with them.”

FirstsLooksLongStillsI CanDifferentRememberNightImagineSkyDogArmsThousandShapesMoonHundredCirclesFlatsAll NightBosomsThighsVistas
Book:The Complete Cosmicomics
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