550 Quotes by Italo Calvino

In general confusion youth recognizes itself and rejoices.

Turin is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way towards madness.

Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don’t mean escaping into dreams or the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification. (Terence sent me this quote the other day. A good battle cry, I believe... and one I wholeheartedly respect.)

Good literature can be created only with something that is different from literature.

The novels that attract me most... are those that create an illusion of transperancy around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible.

A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.

In politics, as in every other sphere of life, there are two important principles for a man of any sense: don't cherish too many illusions, and never stop believing that every little bit helps.

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

Man is simply the best chance we know of that matter has had of providing itself with information about itself.