550 Quotes by Italo Calvino

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand

I continue to gaze into the valley bottom of the memory. And my fear now is that as soon as a memory forms it immediately takes on the wrong light, mannered, sentimental as war and youth always are, becomes a piece of narrative written in the style of the time, which can't tell us how things really were but only how we thought we saw them, thought we said them. I don't know if I am destroying the past or saving it, the past hidden in that besieged village.

إنَّ الكاتبَ المستوحِد يُرى في مكتَبِه

حرفةُ الكتابة تجعل المرءَ يعيش ضمنَ نسقٍ ، فرجلٌ جالسٌ في مكتبه يشبه أيَّ رجلٍ آخر جالس في مكتَبِه

في الكتابةِ مَن يتكلَّم هو المَكبُوح

The proper use of language, for me personally, is one that enables us to approach things (present or absent) with discretion, attention, and caution, with respect for what things (present or absent) communicate without words.

[...] mi sembra che il linguaggio venga sempre usato in modo approssimativo, casuale, sbadato, e ne provo un fastidio intollerabile.

Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know.

To write, for example, a crime that is horrible but which somehow 'resembles' the butterfly, which would be light and fine like the butterfly. I could also describe the butterfly, but bearing in mind the horrible scene of a crime, so that the butterfly would become something frightful.