550 Quotes by Italo Calvino

I change my method and field of reference from book to book because I can never believe in the same thing two times running.

I could distinguish the shape of her bosom, her arms, her thighs, just as I remember them now, just as now, when the Moon has become that flat, remote circle, I still look for her as soon as the first sliver appears in the sky, and the more it waxes, the more clearly I imagine I can see her, her or something of her, but only her, in a hundred, a thousand different vistas, she who makes the Moon the Moon and, whenever she is full, sets the dogs to howling all night long, and me with them.

I detest this contemporary trend to destroy the traditional hierarchy of genres.

Knowledge of the world means dissolving the solidity of the world.

I do not understand how you can associate abortion with an idea of hedonism or the good life.

I don't believe chance can play a role in my literature.

When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign - a bad sign mostly for literature. But it is also a bad sign when they don't want to hear the word mentioned.

I feel so at home in New York that I don't have the urge to write about it.

…we can not love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.