A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading. Italo Calvino More Quotes by Italo Calvino More Quotes From Italo Calvino Revolutionaries are more formalistic than conservatives. Italo Calvino revolutionrevolutionary every choice has its obverse, that is to say a renunciation, and so there is no difference between the act of choosing and the act of renouncing Italo Calvino renunciationdifferenceschoices 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 mademeanfacts How well I would write if I were not here! Italo Calvino wellsifswriting My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language. . . . Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world--qualities that stick to the writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them. Italo Calvino citieswritingpeople 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 spacereadingsex 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 shapesendscities 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 ancientclassicbook We could say, then, that man is an instrument the world employs to renew its own image constantly. Italo Calvino instrumentsmenworld 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. Italo Calvino differentcitiesnames The close-up has no equivalent in a narrative fashioned of words. Literature is totally lacking in any working method to enable it to isolate a single vastly enlarged detail in which one face comes forward to underline a state of mind or stress the importance of a single detail in comparison with the rest. As a narrative device, the ability to vary the distance between the camera and the object may be a small thing indeed, but it makes for a notable difference between cinema and oral or written narrative, in which the distance between language and image is always the same. Italo Calvino distancedifferencesstress seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space Italo Calvino infernospacegiving In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single, homogenous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language. Italo Calvino differencescommunicationrunning It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books. Italo Calvino realreadingbook The word connects the visible trace with the invisible thing, the absent thing, the thing that is desired or feared, like a frail emergency bridge flung over an abyss. Italo Calvino invisibleemergenciesbridges The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts. Italo Calvino wallghosthouse Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist. Italo Calvino redundantcitiesmemories Writing always means hiding something in such a way that it then is discovered. Italo Calvino truthwritingmean You have with you the book you were reading in the cafe, which you are eager to continue, so that you can then hand it on to her, to communicate again with her through the channel dug by others' words, which, as they are uttered by an alien voice, by the voice of that silent nobody made of ink and typographical spacing, can become yours and hers, a language, a code between the two of you, a means to exchange signals and recognize each other. Italo Calvino readingmeanbook …we can not love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. Italo Calvino fragmentsdisappearthinking
