Quotes by Italo Calvino

About Italo Calvino:

Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Italo Calvino

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

I suffer from everyday life.

Italo Calvino

I'm afraid I don't think I really have a life on which something can be written.

Italo Calvino

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

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

Italo Calvino

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

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

Italo Calvino

The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.

Italo Calvino

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

Italo Calvino

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

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

Italo Calvino

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

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.

Italo Calvino

An exotic birthplace on its own is not informative of anything.

Italo Calvino

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

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

Italo Calvino

Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy.

Italo Calvino

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, o...

Italo Calvino

A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.

Italo Calvino

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.

Italo Calvino

Author Bio

  • NameItalo Calvino
  • DescriptionItalian journalist and writer of short stories and novels
  • AliasesItalo Giovanni Calvino Mameli
  • BornOctober 15, 1923
  • DiedSeptember 19, 1985
  • CountryItaly
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Politician; Journalist; Reporter; Essayist; Novelist; Literary Editor
  • WorksThe Baron In The Trees; Invisible Cities; If On A Winter's Night A Traveler; Our Ancestors; Cosmicomics; Sotto Il Sole Giaguaro; Six Memos For The Next Millennium; ; ; ; The Path To The Nest Of Spiders; The Crow Comes Last; The Cloven Viscount; ; ; Italian Folktales; ; ; The Nonexistent Knight; ; Marcovaldo; ; T Zero; ; Difficult Loves; The Castle Of Crossed Destinies; Mr. Palomar
  • AwardsLegion Of Honour; Austrian State Prize For European Literature