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 The book I'm looking for,' says the blurred figure, who holds out a volume similar to yours, 'is the one that gives the sense of the world after the end of the world, the sense that the world is the end of everything that there is in the world, that the only thing there is in the world is the end of the world. Italo Calvino giving book world So you begin to wonder if Leonia's true passion is really, as they say, the enjoyment of new and different things, and not, instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity. Italo Calvino passion different joy Why come to Trude? I asked myself. And I already wanted to leave. You cand resume your flight whereever you like," they say to me, "but you will arive at another Trude, absolutely the same, detail by detail. The world is covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the names of the airport changes. Italo Calvino airports details names Having exhausted every possibility at the moment when he was coming full circle, Antonino realised that photographing photographs was the only course that he had left - or, rather, the true course he had obscurely been seeking all this time. (Last line of the story The Adventure of a Photographer ) Italo Calvino circles stories adventure I am prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an extreme of their cycle and there is no imagining what new forms they may assume. Italo Calvino A quarter of America is a dramatic, tense, violent country, exploding with contradictions, full of brutal, physiological vitality, and that is the America that I have really loved and love. But a good half of it is a country of boredom, emptiness, monotony, brainless production, and brainless consumption, and this is the American inferno. Italo Calvino loved good love country Although I am small, ugly and dirty, I am highly ambitious, and at the slightest flattery, I immediately start to strut like a turkey. Italo Calvino i-am small start ugly An exotic birthplace on its own is not informative of anything. Italo Calvino anything own birthplace exotic Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy. Italo Calvino make thoughtful heavy dull Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them. Italo Calvino find think know unexpected A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway. Italo Calvino present classic noise work I'm a Communist, fully convinced and dedicated to my cause. Italo Calvino cause dedicated communist convinced The public figure of the writer, the writer-character, the 'personality-cult' of the author, are all becoming for me more and more intolerable in others, and consequently in myself. Italo Calvino others more myself me I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hendecasyllables; so after a while, I get bored and my drawer is overflowing with unfinished short poems. Italo Calvino short you boring writing One writes fables in periods of oppression. Italo Calvino writes oppression fables periods How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan. Italo Calvino short rules energy trying The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them. Italo Calvino best rich enjoy experience Bringing a child into the world makes sense only if this child is wanted consciously and freely by its two parents. If it is not, then it is simply animal and criminal behavior. Italo Calvino parents child animal world I detest this contemporary trend to destroy the traditional hierarchy of genres. Italo Calvino trend destroy traditional hierarchy
