Italo Calvino: Book

Italo Calvino was Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. Explore interesting quotes on book.

Italo Calvino: 88 quotes7 likes

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”

Italo Calvino The Uses of Literature

Source: The Uses of Literature

“Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?”

“It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.”

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Don't ask where the rest of this book is!" It is a shrill cry that comes from an undefined spot among the shelves. "All books continue in the beyond…”

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings… if you need little to set the imagination going, I require even less: the promise of reading is enough.”

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“I set my hand to the art of writing early on. Publishing was easy for me, and I at once found favor and understanding. But it was a long time before I realized and convinced myself that this was anything but mere chance.
Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one's mother's womb.
Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined. And this definition is something you may then carry with you for the rest of your life, trying to confirm it or extend or correct or deny it; but you can never eliminate it.”

Italo Calvino book The Path to the Nest of Spiders

The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1947), Preface
English translation: Archibald Colquhoun (1957), HarperCollins.