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" One writes fables in periods of oppression. "
Italo Calvino
Writes
Fables
Oppression
Related Quotes:
" What is modern art but the attempt to pinpoint vague, incorporeal, inexpressible sensations? What is modern art, I would add, but the most solemn pile of nonsense that ever appeared on Earth? "
Italo Calvino
Art
Modern Art
Modern
" I was born in Cuba, and my parents were tropical agronomists. "
Italo Calvino
Parents
Born
Cuba
" 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
Rules
Trying
Short
" 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
Me
" Folktales are real. "
Italo Calvino
Real
" Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write licking their finger. "
Italo Calvino
Write
Divide
Finger
" I detest this contemporary trend to destroy the traditional hierarchy of genres. "
Italo Calvino
Destroy
Genres
Hierarchy
" A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading. "
Italo Calvino
Book
Sense
Reading
" I have never loved any writer as much as Hemingway. "
Italo Calvino
Writer
Never
Hemingway
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
Knowledge
World
Better
" A tale is born from an image, and the image extends and creates a network of meanings that are always equivocal. "
Italo Calvino
Always
Image
Born
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
Time
Reading
Every Day
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
Morning
Writing
Sleep
" My university work was not central to my education. "
Italo Calvino
University
Work
Education
" Politics is marginal, but literature moves along by indirection. "
Italo Calvino
Politics
Moves
Literature
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
Beginning
End
Place
" I'm afraid I don't think I really have a life on which something can be written. "
Italo Calvino
Something
Afraid
Life
" If the reader looks, I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories. "
Italo Calvino
Moral
Think
Political
" It is not the voice that commands the story; it is the ear. "
Italo Calvino
Ear
Voice
Story
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
Political
Political Party
Party
" 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
Noise
Present
Work
" New York is a fabled city, a fabulous city. "
Italo Calvino
New
City
Fabulous
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
You
City
Differences
" I read Freud because I find him an excellent writer... a writer of police thrillers that can be followed with great passion. "
Italo Calvino
Him
Read
Great
" I am more and more convinced that literature is made up of works, genres, schools, discussions, problems, collective work in order to solve certain problems. "
Italo Calvino
I Am
Literature
Work
" 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
" A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. "
Italo Calvino
Say
Classic
Book
" Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy. "
Italo Calvino
Thoughtful
Heavy
Make
" 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
More
Myself
Writer
" Of course, I'm of the generation that grew up with Hemingway and Faulkner as strong influences. "
Italo Calvino
Up
Generation
Strong