Italo Calvino: Quotes about reading

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

Italo Calvino: 88 quotes7 likes

“One reads alone, even in another's presence.”

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.”

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

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

“The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.”

“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

“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.”

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Today each of you is the object of the other’s reading, one reads in the other the unwritten story.”

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

“What makes love making and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space”

"If on a winter's night a traveller". Chapter 7. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver (1981).