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

Italo Calvino

One writes fables in periods of oppression.

Italo Calvino

Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write licking their finger.

Italo Calvino

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

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

Italo Calvino

New York is a fabled city, a fabulous city.

Italo Calvino

I spend 12 hours a day reading on most days of the year.

Italo Calvino

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

Italo Calvino

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.

Italo Calvino

Reading is a possession, a march toward a possession.

Italo Calvino

If the reader looks, I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories.

Italo Calvino

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

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

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.

Italo Calvino

Personally, I believe in fiction because the stories I like are those with a beginning and an end.

Italo Calvino

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

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

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

Italo Calvino

I was born in Cuba, and my parents were tropical agronomists.

Italo Calvino

I have never loved any writer as much as Hemingway.

Italo Calvino

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.

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