Quotes from book
Invisible Cities

Name: Invisible Cities
Author: Italo Calvino

Italo CalvinoOriginal title Le città invisibili (Italian, 1974)

Invisible Cities is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore.

“There is no language without deceit.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Page 44.
Source: Invisible Cities (1972)
Context: With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

“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.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

“You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

“Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

“Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

“Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

“Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Page 10
Invisible Cities (1972)
Context: As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. (di quest'onda che rifluisce dai ricordi la città s'imbeve coma una spugna e si dilata). The city, however, does not tell of its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand...

“Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

“Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

“"Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me."
Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch."”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Page 82.
Invisible Cities (1972)

“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Final paragraph.
Invisible Cities (1972)