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" 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. "

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" Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world. "

Italo Calvino

World

My Own

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" Rarely does an interviewer ask questions you did not expect. I have given a lot of interviews, and I have concluded that the questions always look alike. I could always give the same answers. "

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

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

" Of course, I'm of the generation that grew up with Hemingway and Faulkner as strong influences. "

Italo Calvino

Generation

Strong

" I'm a regular guy; I like well-defined outlines. I'm old-fashioned, bourgeois. "

Italo Calvino

Bourgeois

Guy

" I was born in Cuba, and my parents were tropical agronomists. "

" Every morning I tell myself, 'Today has to be productive' - and then something happens that prevents me from writing. "

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

Italo Calvino

Time

Own

" Folktales are real. "

Italo Calvino

Real

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

" I detest this contemporary trend to destroy the traditional hierarchy of genres. "

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

" I don't believe chance can play a role in my literature. "

" The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I have never loved any writer as much as Hemingway. "

" Man is simply the best chance we know of that matter has had of providing itself with information about itself. "

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

" 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. "

" When I'm writing a book, I prefer not to speak about it, because only when the book is finished can I try to understand what I've really done and to compare my intentions with the result. "

" I read Freud because I find him an excellent writer... a writer of police thrillers that can be followed with great passion. "

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

" 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