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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
believe
Personally, I believe in fiction because the stories I like are those with a beginning and an end.
convinced fully
I'm a Communist, fully convinced and dedicated to my cause.
dull frivolity lightness
Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy.
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.
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.
late morning slowly start terrified
I'm terrified of writing at night, for then I can't sleep. So I start slowly, slowly writing in the morning and go on into the late afternoon.
Reading is a possession, a march toward a possession.
becoming figure public
The public figure of the writer, the writer-character, the 'personality-cult' of the author, are all becoming for me more and more intolerable in others, and consequently in myself.