550 Quotes by Italo Calvino

My confidence in the future of literature consists in the knowledge that there are things that only literature can give us, by means specific to it.

Every time I must find something to do that will look like something a little beyond my capabilities.

A quarter of America is a dramatic, tense, violent country, exploding with contradictions, full of brutal, physiological vitality, and that is the America that I have really loved and love. But a good half of it is a country of boredom, emptiness, monotony, brainless production, and brainless consumption, and this is the American inferno.

Now, the old man happened to be the Lord.

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

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

I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!

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.

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