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
late politics society
I think today that politics registers very late things which society manifests through other channels, and I feel that often politics distorts and mystifies reality.
bringing child criminal freely simply
Bringing a child into the world makes sense only if this child is wanted consciously and freely by its two parents. If it is not, then it is simply animal and criminal behavior.
associate good life understand
I do not understand how you can associate abortion with an idea of hedonism or the good life.
destroy detest hierarchy trend
I detest this contemporary trend to destroy the traditional hierarchy of genres.
certain writings
For the critic, the author does not exist; only a certain number of writings exist.
books genuine italy less might novel provide trying useful wasted
How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan.
excellent followed freud great thrillers writer
I read Freud because I find him an excellent writer... a writer of police thrillers that can be followed with great passion.
tropical
I was born in Cuba, and my parents were tropical agronomists.
plenty reader
If the reader looks, I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories.
encourages logic opens towards writer
Turin is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way towards madness.
background holds noise persists totally work
A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.
motivational travel lying
Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.
photography ifs
Photography has a meaning only if it exhausts all possible images.
moments lost found
Yet, even now, ever time (often) that I find that I don't understand something, then instinctively, I'm filled with the hope that perhaps this will be my moment again, perhaps once again I shall understand nothing, I shall grasp that other knowledge, found and lost in an instant.