Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Italo Calvino

Quote by Italo Calvino

“This shell was a thing different from me but also the truest part of me, the explanation of who I was, my portrait translated into a rhythmic system of volumes and stripes and colors and hard matter, and it was the portrait of her as she was, because at the same time she was making herself a shell identical to mine and without knowing it I was copying what she was doing and she without knowing it was copying what I was doing, and all the others were copying all the others, so we would be back where we had been before except for the fact that in saying these shells were the same I was a bit hasty, because when you looked closer you discovered all sorts of little differences that later on might become enormous.”

Quote by Italo Calvino

Work

Cosmicomics

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino

Italian writer and journalist, known for his unique narrative style and rich imagination. Calvino is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, whose works have had a profound impact on literature both in Italy and around the world. more

You May Also Like

“Nature propels the philosopher into mankind like an arrow; it takes no aim but hopes the arrow will stick somewhere. But countless times it misses and is depressed at the fact… The artist and the philosopher are evidence against the purposiveness of nature as regards the means it employs, though they are also first-rate evidence as to the wisdom of its purpose. They strike home at only a few, while they ought to strike home at everybody—and even these few are not struck with the force with which the philosopher and artist launch their shot.” —Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Treatise on Nomadology—The War Machine, p. 377; originally: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator, in Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 177–178. Archive.org”

“Let me pull back the curtain to reveal the wizard and the machinery. As someone who writes experimental fiction, hybrid memoir, and poetry, and who translates contemporary German-language literature, I hope this book shows you can be a writer and have a laugh, be a laugh. And have friends. Have your cake and eat it, too. It's like the backlash against method acting--you're not your character, why not just act.”

“That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary.”

“آسانی آموزش زبان لاتینی برای ایتالیاییان، و فراوانی بقایای آثار هنری دوران باستان در آن کشور، راه را برای گرایش مردم ایتالیا به فرهنگ کلاسیک هموار ساخت؛ و چند عامل دیگر مانند سیرت قومی که با گذشت زمان دگرگون شده بود، و نهادهای سیاسی که لومباردها از آلمان وارد کرده بودند، و کلیسا، با آن گرایش به هم آمیختند و‌ روح مدرن ایتالیایی را که مقدر بود سرمشق و آرمان تمامی دنیای باختر زمین باشد، به دست آوردند.”