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I am prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an extreme of their cycle and there is no imagining what new forms they may assume.


Italo Calvino

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JOSEPH P. KAUFFMAN The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of...
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY there is no dead matter," he taught us, "lifelessness is only a disguise behind which hide unknown f...
BRUNO SCHULZ I am truly not an axiologist, but I am concerned about the value of life in all of its forms and sha...
DEBASISH MRIDHA All forms of human happiness contain within themselves the seeds of their own decomposition.
THEODORE DALRYMPLE The unceasing flow of thought in all its various forms is an inescapable and defining aspect of the ...
PAUL O'BRIEN Whatever the length and tediousness of the search for new forms of work within the CIS, we mustn't p...
VLADIMIR PUTIN The extreme parts of time extremely forms all causes to the purpose of his speed.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Where there is no human connection, there is no compassion. Without compassion, then community, comm...
SUSAN VREELAND Times change and forms and their meanings alter. Thus new poems are necessary. Their forms must be d...
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS There are all kinds of forms that have to be filled in on the typewriter. I don't know why, but univ...
JAMES ALLAN Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist- that is, I don't make t...
H.P. LOVECRAFT On Halloween, kids get to assume, for one night the outward forms of their innermost dread, and they...
KATE CHRISTENSEN Birth and Death are words we chose to describe the doorways in and out of a cycle. This cycle is con...
FRANKLIN GILLETTE What you see is what you get. There are no gimmicks. It's not like other forms of music where you ha...
AUDIE BLAYLOCK I advise people not to research radiation unless they are prepared to take the risks to their own he...
STEVEN MAGEE If you imagine b, d, p, and q, those are letter forms that all the children always mess up. They are...
BRUNO MAAG Monsters, monsters! But there are no monsters! What you call monsters are superior forms, or forms b...
OCTAVE MIRBEAU A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his...
THOMAS JEFFERSON Pervading materialism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressi...
POPE JOHN PAUL II You're still lovely," Mor said a bit gently.
Elain offered a half smile. "I suppose that war m...
SARAH J. MAAS There are forms of oppression and domination which become invisible - the new normal.
MICHEL FOUCAULT All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease,...
ECKHART TOLLE It's a city in which all forms of eccentricity were not just tolerated but always welcomed. There is...
JAMES LEE BURKE To understand what I am saying, you have to believe that dance is something other than technique. We...
PINA BAUSCH It is well worth the efforts of a life-time to have attained knowledge which justifies an attack on ...
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling.
SUSANNE LANGER One of the most dangerous forms of human error is forgetting what one is trying to achieve.
PAUL NITZE I believe, as Lenin said, that this revolutionary chaos may yet crystallize into new forms of life.
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language. There is within ...
KEITH HARING Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that ...
BRIAN TRACY Respect for the dignity of the human person is the foundational principle of any just society. From ...
SALVATORE J. CORDILEONE She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your he...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to...
ITALO CALVINO may be great, and it may take a variable number of overt and convert forms
LLOYD ALLEN COOK I am not a traditionalist, questioning the social condition of the society. To achieve this, I use V...
GOPAKUMAR R I enjoy all forms of writing, but playwrighting is what made me what I am. Not only working with the...
JOHN LOGAN The issue isn't whether he loved you, it's how much. Too much. Love can be poison
SARAH J. MAAS I am broken and healing, but every piece of my heart belong to you.
SARAH J. MAAS He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain...
SARAH J. MAAS Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold ...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Hodor," said Hodor.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN You do what you love, what you need
SARAH J. MAAS I turned.
Rhysand leaned against the archway into the sitting room, arms crossed, wings nowhere...
SARAH J. MAAS just as we did in the McCarthy era, we have offset the decline of traditional forms of repression wi...
DAVID COLE Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems t...
EDWARD GIBBON The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity o...
MICHAEL JACKSON All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is den...
VERNON HOWARD All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is den...
VERNON HOWARD If the women of the United States, with their free schools and all their enlarged liberties, are not...
ANNA HOWARD SHAW There were so many forms of prehistoric technology.
Of those, men dig a few which fit into curr...
TOBA BETA We live in the present with knowledge that the past is alive in us – our history speaks to us. The...
KILROY J. OLDSTER I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being...
OSCAR WILDE I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being...
THORNTON WILDER Every man must have a philosophy of life,
for everyone must have a standard by which to measur...
B.R. AMBEDKAR Out of limitations, new forms emerge
GEORGES BRAQUE God is one, but he has innumerable forms. He is the creator of all and He himself takes the human fo...
GURU NANAK Insurgence and all forms of evil in a society doesn't describes her as a failure, but vividly shows ...
MICHAEL BASSEY JOHNSON There's not a lot of art forms where you can control your presentation and your ideas.
GERARD WAY There are slow geochemical processes that can create spherical shapes and filamentous forms. The 'ey...
PETER SCHULTZ If every human being disappeared off the face of the earth in an instant, the earth would still keep...
GRAHAM NASH I enjoy all forms of music - pop, classical and opera.
STEPHEN HAWKING You have no right to erect your tollgate upon the highways of thought. You have no right to leap fro...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Incest is one of the forms of nastiness in the show. Really, all forms of contemporary evil are ther...
ELIZABETH KENNY To many forms of life of our northern lands, winter means a long sleep; to others, it means what it ...
JOHN BURROUGHS Compassion is one of the greatest forms of human expression. Learn the art!
ROBERT M. HENSEL The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a sing...
MICHAEL CRICHTON It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms o...
WILLIAM PLOMER It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms o...
WILLIAM PLOMER I think what's really amazing is this is the kind of growth they're showing without a new product cy...
ESTHER SCHREIBER I guess I think differently than most folks. I think the reason the world is a mystical, enchanting ...
E. M. CRANE The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms th...
WILHELM REICH It may be said, in broad-brush terms, that the primary purpose of life is the continuation of life. ...
RICHARD J. BORDEN The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
RICHARD FEYNMAN Herbal medicines are complete in their natural, whole forms with constituents that work together and...
DR. NANCY UTTER A curtain of stars, miles of them, are scattered, glowing, across the sky and their multitude humble...
BRET EASTON ELLIS All work is noble; the only ignoble thing is to live without working. There is need to realize the v...
MARIA MONTESSORI I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those...
SIR THOMAS BROWNE I love snow, snow, and all the forms of radiant frost.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY We can imagine a society in which no one could survive as a social being because it does not corresp...
NOAM CHOMSKY Classicism becomes avant-garde when everyone else is doing their utmost to develop new stylistic for...
MICHAEL HANEKE Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pre...
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL Whether religion is man-made is a question for philosophers or theologians. But the forms are man-ma...
MIRCEA ELIADE I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jo...
ALAN LIGHTMAN There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different fo...
EMILE DURKHEIM There are many different forms of family and there is no fact NO 'the' family. The basic building bl...
CHRISTINA ENGELA In an extensive reading of recent books by psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and inspira...
JAMES THURBER We may well have reached the peak of the economic cycle earlier in the year.
JOHN CHALLENGER All great art is by its very essence in conflict with the society with which it exists. It expresses...
ERICH FROMM It is true that I am often startled and even angered and repulsed by the strange directions and prov...
DAVID ROCKEFELLER But the life that no longer trust another human being and no longer forms ties to the political comm...
MARTHA NUSSBAUM She made a fence of phrases, which seemed a treachery to herself.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR You are the blood of the dragon. You can make a hat.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except ...
ECKHART TOLLE I've loved all forms of animation.
MING-NA WEN The poet's other readers are the ancient poets, who look upon the freshly written pages from an ...
SALVATORE QUASIMODO

More Italo Calvino

An exotic birthplace on its own is not informative of anything.
ITALO CALVINO His trees were now hung all over with scrawled pieces of paper and bits of cardboard with maxims fro...
ITALO CALVINO Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.
ITALO CALVINO The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines.
ITALO CALVINO What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the r...
ITALO CALVINO It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
ITALO CALVINO Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because...
ITALO CALVINO The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted ...
ITALO CALVINO Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has,...
ITALO CALVINO Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and...
ITALO CALVINO The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.
ITALO CALVINO The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to...
ITALO CALVINO The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretch...
ITALO CALVINO When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sig...
ITALO CALVINO A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
ITALO CALVINO A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but...
ITALO CALVINO Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most ...
ITALO CALVINO Nature in America does not arouse powerful emotions in me.
ITALO CALVINO What is modern art but the attempt to pinpoint vague, incorporeal, inexpressible sensations? What is...
ITALO CALVINO Revolutionaries are more formalistic than conservatives.
ITALO CALVINO I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hend...
ITALO CALVINO The city of Leonia refashions itself every day: every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, ...
ITALO CALVINO Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness
ITALO CALVINO Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because...
ITALO CALVINO Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places e...
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.
ITALO CALVINO In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision.
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO One writes fables in periods of oppression.
ITALO CALVINO A quarter of America is a dramatic, tense, violent country, exploding with contradictions, full of b...
ITALO CALVINO Of course, I'm of the generation that grew up with Hemingway and Faulkner as strong influences.
ITALO CALVINO Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy.
ITALO CALVINO It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear
ITALO CALVINO Viaggi per rivivere il tuo passato? — era a questo punto la domanda del Kan, che poteva anche esse...
ITALO CALVINO Every time I've had to do journalistic investigations, I've cursed, but later I discovered t...
ITALO CALVINO In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Follo...
ITALO CALVINO Sections in the bookstore

- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You Needn't Read
- B...
ITALO CALVINO To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept ...
ITALO CALVINO Rarely does an interviewer ask questions you did not expect. I have given a lot of interviews, and I...
ITALO CALVINO How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy...
ITALO CALVINO Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.
ITALO CALVINO Mas a desgraça é que foi levado à loucura por Eros, deus pagão, que quanto mais reprimido, mais ...
ITALO CALVINO Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write l...
ITALO CALVINO The only contact we could have with the void was through this little the void had produced as quinte...
ITALO CALVINO Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpec...
ITALO CALVINO If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a...
ITALO CALVINO What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the r...
ITALO CALVINO You are at the wheel of your car, waiting at a traffic light, you take the book out of the bag, rip ...
ITALO CALVINO Ya en el escaparate de la librería localizaste la portada con el título que buscabas. Siguiendo es...
ITALO CALVINO Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could end...
ITALO CALVINO Don't you ever get tired of reading?" she asked. "You could hardly be called good company! Don't you...
ITALO CALVINO In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Follo...
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompa...
ITALO CALVINO I'm a regular guy; I like well-defined outlines. I'm old-fashioned, bourgeois.
ITALO CALVINO The public figure of the writer, the writer-character, the 'personality-cult' of the author,...
ITALO CALVINO The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand
ITALO CALVINO Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.
ITALO CALVINO ...the world was trying to change its old face and show its underbelly of earth and roots.
ITALO CALVINO Amusement has always been the great moving force behind culture.
ITALO CALVINO E combattendo, troveranno che le parole non hanno più significato.
ITALO CALVINO The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never h...
ITALO CALVINO It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the nig...
ITALO CALVINO If all material were transparent—the ground that supports us, the envelope that sheathes our body�...
ITALO CALVINO Tu casa, al ser el lugar donde lees, puede decirnos cuál es el lugar que los libros tienen en tu vi...
ITALO CALVINO Although I am small, ugly and dirty, I am highly ambitious, and at the slightest flattery, I immedia...
ITALO CALVINO My mother delayed my enrollment in the Fascist scouts, the Balilla, as long as possible, fi...
ITALO CALVINO A los duelos suceden tarde o temprano acontecimientos alegres, es ley de vida.
ITALO CALVINO No puede haber amor si no se es uno mismo con todas sus fuerzas.
ITALO CALVINO - Quando sarai stanco di star lì cambierai idea! - gli gridò.
- Non cambierò mai idea, - fec...
ITALO CALVINO hasta que murió, sin haber comprendido, tras una vida entera dedicada a la fe, en qué creía, pero...
ITALO CALVINO Yo tenía la impresión de que mi hermano no sólo había enloquecido del todo, sino que se estaba v...
ITALO CALVINO کوزیمو طرحی نوشته و منتشر کرده بود که این نام را داشت: "پ...
ITALO CALVINO Nuestro padre se asomó al antepecho.
- ¡Cuando te canses de estar ahí ya cambiarás de idea!...
ITALO CALVINO A gentleman, my Lord Father, is such whether he is on earth or on the treetops
ITALO CALVINO As a matter of fact, we had already been warned against sliding down the marble banisters, not out o...
ITALO CALVINO Cosimo stretched out his arms. 'I came up here before you, my lords, and here I will stay afterwards...
ITALO CALVINO It was on the fifteenth of June, 1767, that Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, my brother, sat among us for ...
ITALO CALVINO That mesh of leaves and twigs of fork and froth, minute and endless, with the sky glimpsed only in s...
ITALO CALVINO Cosimo did not yet know love, and what is any experience without that? What point is there in riskin...
ITALO CALVINO Now that he is no longer here I should be interested in so many things: philosophy, politics, histor...
ITALO CALVINO We live in a country where causes are always seen but never effects.
ITALO CALVINO In the Ondariva gardens the branches spread out like the tentacles of extraordinary animals, and the...
ITALO CALVINO Le imprese più ardite vanno vissute con l'animo più semplice. (Cosimo Piovasco Barone di Rondò)
ITALO CALVINO Her breast was young, the nipples rosy. Cosimo just grazed it with his lips, before Viola slid away ...
ITALO CALVINO ...his life was dominating by conflicting ideas, as often happens in periods of transition. The turb...
ITALO CALVINO Il bassotto alzò il muso verso di lui, con lo sguardo dei cani quando non capiscono e non sanno che...
ITALO CALVINO We'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses.
ITALO CALVINO The more time passed, the less happened. The more they felt something must happen, the more the bail...
ITALO CALVINO And she knew him and so herself, for although she had always known herself she had never been able t...
ITALO CALVINO Ombrosa non c’è più. Guardando il cielo sgombro, mi domando se è davvero esistita. Quel frastag...
ITALO CALVINO There is the moment when the silence of the countryside gathers in the ear and breaks into a myriad ...
ITALO CALVINO That wish to enter into an elusive element which had urged Cosimo into the trees, was still working ...
ITALO CALVINO Why d’you make me suffer?"
“Because I love you.”
Now it was his turn to get angry. �...
ITALO CALVINO Si conobbero. Lui conobbe lei e se stesso, perché in verità non s'era mai saputo. E lei conobbe lu...
ITALO CALVINO So began their love, the boy happy and amazed, she happy and not surprised at all (nothing happens b...
ITALO CALVINO Myśli te zaprawione były pewną goryczą ludzi starych, którzy więcej cierpią nad utratą rzecz...
ITALO CALVINO Something must always remain that eludes us ... For power to have an object on which it can be exerc...
ITALO CALVINO again I am torn between the necessity and the impossibility of answering.
ITALO CALVINO A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "H...
ITALO CALVINO Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great ...
ITALO CALVINO Resta-nos esclarecer a parte que nesse golfo fantástico cabe ao imaginário indireto, ou seja, o co...
ITALO CALVINO La mia ricerca dell’esattezza si biforca in due direzioni. Da una parte la riduzione degli avvenim...
ITALO CALVINO Penso che siamo sempre alla caccia di qualcosa di nascosto o di solo potenziale o ipotetico, di cui ...
ITALO CALVINO Journeys to relive your past?' was the Khan's question at this point, a question which could also ha...
ITALO CALVINO After a seven days' march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city ...
ITALO CALVINO what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a pa...
ITALO CALVINO God knows wherebthey are now, the people I receive instructions, or rather-let's come right out and ...
ITALO CALVINO ...eyes that, like those of children, look at an eternal present without forgiveness.
ITALO CALVINO Today each of you is the object of the other’s reading, one reads in the other the unwritten story...
ITALO CALVINO In Chloe, a great city, the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter...
ITALO CALVINO There is still one of which you never speak.'

Marco Polo bowed his head.

'Veni...
ITALO CALVINO With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpecte...
ITALO CALVINO You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question ...
ITALO CALVINO Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret,...
ITALO CALVINO I write by hand, making many, many corrections. I would say I cross out more than I write. I have to...
ITALO CALVINO If I were to draw, I would apply myself only to studying the form of inanimate objects," I said some...
ITALO CALVINO ...an archer, the moment he thinks he's experienced, is lost; every lion we encounter in our brief l...
ITALO CALVINO The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here...
ITALO CALVINO The naked man had lost hope now; he would never be able to return to the earth's surface;he would ne...
ITALO CALVINO Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I i...
ITALO SVEVO You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.
ITALO SVEVO God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.
ITALO SVEVO There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and... the third I can't remember
ITALO SVEVO The problem is that remittances [from the U.S.] have made Salvadorans comfortable and they don't wan...
ITALO ESCRICH The problem is that remittances [from the United States] have made Salvadorans comfortable, and they...
ITALO ESCRICH