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" I write by hand, making many, many corrections. I would say I cross out more than I write. I have to hunt for words when I speak, and I have the same difficulty when writing. "

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" Sometimes I try to concentrate on the story I would like to write, and I realize that what interests me is something else entirely, or, rather, not anything precise but everything that does not fit in what I ought to write. "

Italo Calvino

Story

Try

" I'm only a novelist on occasion. Many of my books are made up of brief texts collected together, short stories, or else they are books that have an overall structure but are composed of various texts. "

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

Italo Calvino

Time

Own

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

" I suffer from everyday life. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Italo Calvino

Our

Walls

" In 'Cosmicomics,' I came close to science fiction - I was inspired by cosmological subjects and the workings of the universe and invented a character who was a sort of witness to everything that was happening inside the solar system. "

" Every time I've had to do journalistic investigations, I've cursed, but later I discovered that it had helped me enormously with writing fiction. It's the one thing that can save me from becoming an academic writer. "

Italo Calvino

Time

Fiction

" One writes fables in periods of oppression. "

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

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

" For the critic, the author does not exist; only a certain number of writings exist. "

" A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people. "

" If the reader looks, I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories. "

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

" A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway. "

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

" My university work was not central to my education. "

" Every day I tell myself that reading newspapers is a waste of time, but then... I cannot do without them. They are like a drug. "

" 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

Myself

Writer

" A tale is born from an image, and the image extends and creates a network of meanings that are always equivocal. "

" 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. "

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

" Folktales are real. "

Italo Calvino

Real

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "