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" 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

Know

Find

Unexpected

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" Politics is marginal, but literature moves along by indirection. "

" New York is a fabled city, a fabulous city. "

" I'm terrified of writing at night, for then I can't sleep. So I start slowly, slowly writing in the morning and go on into the late afternoon. "

" 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. "

" It is not the voice that commands the story; it is the ear. "

" I change my method and field of reference from book to book because I can never believe in the same thing two times running. "

" I do not have any political commitments anymore. I'm politically a total agnostic; I'm one of the few writers in Italy who refuses to be identified with a specific political party. "

" Good literature can be created only with something that is different from literature. "

" I do not understand how you can associate abortion with an idea of hedonism or the good life. "

" I would very much like to be one of those writers who have something really clear in their head to say, and throughout their life they promote this idea in their works. "

Italo Calvino

Much

Head

" I spend 12 hours a day reading on most days of the year. "

" I think today that politics registers very late things which society manifests through other channels, and I feel that often politics distorts and mystifies reality. "

" 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. "

" 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

Start

I Am

" I suffer from everyday life. "

" Reading is a possession, a march toward a possession. "

" The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts. "

Italo Calvino

Our

Walls

" A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. "

" I feel so at home in New York that I don't have the urge to write about it. "

" Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has, and to declare them openly is rather like facing a psychoanalyst. "

" In abortion, the person who is massacred, physically and morally, is the woman. "

" My stories are full of facts; they have a beginning and an end. For that reason, they will never... occupy a place in contemporary literature. "

" One writes fables in periods of oppression. "

" Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write licking their finger. "

" The writer is someone who tears himself to pieces in order to liberate his neighbor. "

" Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy. "

" I have spent more time with other people's books than with my own. I do not regret it. "

Italo Calvino

Time

Own

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

" Now you mustn't think that I don't have any ideas for novels in my head. I've got ideas for ten novels in my head. But with every idea I have, I already foresee the wrong novels I would write, because I also have critical ideas in my head; I've got a full theory of the perfect novel, and that's what stumps me. "

" Personally, I believe in fiction because the stories I like are those with a beginning and an end. "