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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Italo Calvino

You

Answers

Always

" 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

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

" In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision. "

" 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. "

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

Italo Calvino

Generation

Strong

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

" 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. "

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

" What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts. "

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

" I suffer from everyday life. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

Italo Calvino

Bourgeois

Guy

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

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

" 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. "

" Nature in America does not arouse powerful emotions in me. "

Italo Calvino

Emotions

Nature

" 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. "

" 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. "

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