If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
“Something must always remain that eludes us.... For power to have an object on which to be exercised, a space in which to stretch out its arms ... As long as I know there exists in the world someone who does tricks only for the love of the trick, as long as I know there is a woman who loves reading for reading’s sake, I can convince myself that th
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in other words, there is a veil of other images that settles on her image and blurs it, a weight of memories that keep me from seeing her as a person seen for the first time, other people’s memories suspended like the smoke under the lamps.
Italo Calvino • If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
“What does the name of an author on the jacket matter? Let us move forward in thought to three thousand years from now. Who knows which books from our period will be saved, and who knows which authors’ names will be remembered? Some books will remain famous but will be considered anonymous works, as for us the epic of Gilgamesh; other authors’ name
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“Don’t be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful for me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes o
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Renouncing things is less difficult than people believe: it’s all a matter of getting started. Once you’ve succeeded in dispensing with something you thought essential, you realize you can also do without something else, then without many other things.
Italo Calvino • If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.
Italo Calvino • If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone’s ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person! Style, taste, individual philosophy, subjectivity, cultural background, real experience, psychology, tal
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“I like books,” she says, “where all the mysteries and the anguish pass through a precise and cold mind, without shadows, like the mind of a chessplayer.”
Italo Calvino • If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
all places communicate instantly with all other places, a sense of isolation is felt only during the trip between one place and the other, that is, when you are in no place.