Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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? "

Related Quotes:

" 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

" 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. "

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

" I'm a Communist, fully convinced and dedicated to my cause. "

" 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. "

" One writes fables in periods of oppression. "

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

Italo Calvino

Emotions

Nature

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

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

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

Italo Calvino

Generation

Strong

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

" I suffer from everyday life. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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

I Am

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

" 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. "