If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance. Italo Calvino More Quotes by Italo Calvino More Quotes From Italo Calvino It is within you that the ghosts acquire voices. Italo Calvino within-you voice ghost Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little. Italo Calvino venice cities memories Yet, even now, ever time (often) that I find that I don't understand something, then instinctively, I'm filled with the hope that perhaps this will be my moment again, perhaps once again I shall understand nothing, I shall grasp that other knowledge, found and lost in an instant. Italo Calvino moments found lost You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger's passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are. Italo Calvino flower eye winter The city of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other, but they are not the same city. Italo Calvino cat animal men You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours. Italo Calvino delight cities giving Sometimes one who thinks himself incomplete is merely young. Italo Calvino young sometimes thinking Fantasy is like jam. . . . You have to spread it on a solid piece of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing . . . out of which you can’t make anything. Italo Calvino pieces jam bread 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 break-off race two Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because there are as yet no words to enable us to get there. Myth is nourished by silence as well as by words. Italo Calvino buried silence stories Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness. Italo Calvino melancholy sad taken The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand Italo Calvino cities hands past 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. Italo Calvino limits literature struggle The more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there. Italo Calvino quarters cities lost 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 finding-the-one genius inspiration Photography has a meaning only if it exhausts all possible images. Italo Calvino photography ifs There is no language without deceit. Italo Calvino deceit language 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 At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it. Italo Calvino increase deny mirrors 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. Italo Calvino journey book people
