550 Quotes by Italo Calvino

It is only after you have come to know the surface of things ... that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible.

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.

For the man who thought he was Man there is no salvation.

The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them.

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

The best introduction to the psychological world of one of the most important and gifted writers of our time.

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

The contradiction [trying to use Russian model to reshape Italy] grew to such an extent that I felt totally cut off from the communist world and, in the end, from politics. That was fortunate. The idea of putting literature in second place, after politics, is an enormous mistake, because politics almost never achieves its ideals.

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