Italo Calvino Quotes

"The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him."

"The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary."

"You are at the wheel of your car, waiting at a traffic light, you take the book out of the bag, rip off the transparent wrapping, start reading the first lines. A storm of honking breaks over you...."

"The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, removed as a result of ancient prohibitions."

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

"Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top."

"Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents."

"Viaggi per rivivere il tuo passato? — era a questo punto la domanda del Kan, che poteva anche essere formulata così: — Viaggi per ritrovare il tuo futuro?"

"The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, removed as a result of ancient prohibitions"

"When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign -- a bad sign mostly for literature. But it is also a bad sign when they don't want to hear the word mentioned."

"The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines."