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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
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" I have never loved any writer as much as Hemingway. "
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Never
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" Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write licking their finger. "
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Divide
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" Reading is a possession, a march toward a possession. "
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Reading
Toward
" If the reader looks, I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories. "
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Moral
Think
Political
" I don't believe chance can play a role in my literature. "
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Play
Literature
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
Short
Together
Structure
" In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision. "
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Matter
Precision
Love
" 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
Like
I Am
" 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. "
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Know
Find
Unexpected
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
Find
You
Writing
" I do not understand how you can associate abortion with an idea of hedonism or the good life. "
Italo Calvino
Life
Good
Abortion
" I'm afraid I don't think I really have a life on which something can be written. "
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Something
Afraid
Life
" Personally, I believe in fiction because the stories I like are those with a beginning and an end. "
Italo Calvino
Beginning
Believe
End
" 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
" 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
Me
" 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 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
Like
Head
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
Parents
Behavior
Animal
" Every morning I tell myself, 'Today has to be productive' - and then something happens that prevents me from writing. "
Italo Calvino
Morning
Myself
Today
" 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
" It is not the voice that commands the story; it is the ear. "
Italo Calvino
Ear
Voice
Story
" I spend 12 hours a day reading on most days of the year. "
Italo Calvino
Days
Most
Reading
" The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines. "
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Race
Things
Human
" 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
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
People
Human Being
Casual
" 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. "
Italo Calvino
Now
Think
Perfect
" 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
Like
Story
Try
" One writes fables in periods of oppression. "
Italo Calvino
Writes
Fables
Oppression
" Turin is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way towards madness. "
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Writer
Logic
City
" My university work was not central to my education. "
Italo Calvino
University
Work
Education