Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvinowas an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy, the Cosmicomics collection of short stories, and the novels Invisible Citiesand If on a winter's night a traveler...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth15 October 1923
CountryItaly
certain writings
For the critic, the author does not exist; only a certain number of writings exist.
biting licking writers
Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write licking their finger.
drawer sonnets unfinished
I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hendecasyllables; so after a while, I get bored and my drawer is overflowing with unfinished short poems.
himself liberate pieces writer
The writer is someone who tears himself to pieces in order to liberate his neighbor.
mistake cutting ideas
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.
venture surface knows
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.
although highly slightest strut
Although I am small, ugly and dirty, I am highly ambitious, and at the slightest flattery, I immediately start to strut like a turkey.
dull frivolity lightness
Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy.
convinced fully
I'm a Communist, fully convinced and dedicated to my cause.
believe
Personally, I believe in fiction because the stories I like are those with a beginning and an end.
becoming discovered helped later save time
Every time I've had to do journalistic investigations, I've cursed, but later I discovered that it had helped me enormously with writing fiction. It's the one thing that can save me from becoming an academic writer.
ask concluded given rarely
Rarely does an interviewer ask questions you did not expect. I have given a lot of interviews, and I have concluded that the questions always look alike. I could always give the same answers.
appeared art attempt modern pile pinpoint solemn
What is modern art but the attempt to pinpoint vague, incorporeal, inexpressible sensations? What is modern art, I would add, but the most solemn pile of nonsense that ever appeared on Earth?
compare finished intentions prefer
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.