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Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I imagined? Perhaps it was this very doubt that bound me to my vice, because life is so much pleasanter if one is able to believe in one's own latent greatness


Italo Svevo

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I studied literature and Italian at Yale. I wrote my thesis about Italo Svevo, one of my heroes.
NATHANIEL RICH You’re hopeless,” I said just before he kissed me.

“But you love me,” he whispere...
C.A. HARMS Why try to fit in when you were born to stand out?” “I’m nothing special. I’m drowning,” I...
IF I WAKE I’d scream, but I have no voice. The bullies stole it from me
IF I WAKE You said I don’t exist in one life. What if each of these lives are designed to teach you a lesson...
IF I WAKE I’m William James Carter. My friends call me Will,” he says. “I’m Lucy Janette Phillips,” ...
IF I WAKE She has a long journey ahead of her. She doesn’t need to hear she will lose before she even begins
IF I WAKE I didn't have anybody, really, no foundation in life, so I had to make my own way. Always, from the ...
TINA TURNER I held her close to me with my eyes closed, wonering if anything in my life had ever been this perfe...
NICHOLAS SPARKS Perhaps you would have preferred it if I had not written you any letter. Perhaps you would have like...
FéLIX J. PALMA I didn't have anybody, really, no foundation in life, so I had to make my own way. Always, from ...
TINA TURNER You will readily believe me when I say that on leaving my country, I little imagined that I should e...
ADONIRAM JUDSON I don't really wish that it didn't happen because it has changed my life so much. If it didn't happe...
ASHLEY SMITH Very early on, I decided I didn't want smoking in the movie. It's not really a movie about smoking, ...
IVAN REITMAN Deciding to retire is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made, ... I love gymnastics and compe...
BLAINE WILSON I have accumulated so many experiences, so much, that I want to be able to realize so many things. T...
DANIEL BARENBOIM Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it has given me me . It has provide...
ANNE LAMOTT I’D NEVER GIVEN MUCH THOUGHT TO HOW I WOULD die — though I’d had reason enough in the last few...
STEPHENIE MEYER Your heart just breaks, that's all. But you can't judge or point fingers. You just have to be lucky ...
AUDREY HEPBURN I learned to read a little in my primer, to write my own name, and to cypher some in the three first...
DAVY CROCKETT I met the man of my dreams and the one I wanted to marry, it seemed like he was the one, even perhap...
STARGAZER To be allowed to come back to WWE is the greatest gift that's ever been given to me. Back in the...
JAKE ROBERTS But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who...
THOMAS DE QUINCEY I have only ever liked one boy in my life. I have only wanted one man to have as my own. I have only...
TILLIE COLE I couldn't look at her. I'd been jealous and hurt, and I had dragged Liv into the middle of my own b...
KAMI GARCIA Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525 Who belongs to the Church? Who is my true brot...
ROBERT MACCOLL ADAMS It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart becau...
HELEN KELLER I was taught that everything is attainable if you are prepared to give up, to sacrifice, to get it. ...
STIRLING MOSS Better for the judge to see my innocence than for me to think I see it. It is very comfortable for m...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON If I had given up everything that my life was about ... I'd let cancer win before it needed to.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS It gives me so much hope because this is really what I want to do for the rest of my life.
ASHLEY WHEELER I didn't really care if I had a coach that much, me personally, because I was brought up to thin...
BILLIE JEAN KING I had great pity on Ansje, because she always acted very happy, but I believed that it was really a ...
DIET EMAN I really can't say if [Arthur Gagnon] is trying to pull a fast one. But I think it should be correct...
JOSEPH LAWRENCE I guess it was amazing that I was able to shoot redhead ducks in back-to-back seasons. Skip says a m...
CHRIS RICHARDSON Right from my childhood, I have believed in a Supreme Power. I don't know whether it has form, o...
PAWAN KALYAN I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don't hurt me, because it is me. If it was...
PAULO COELHO I had no information how much I was ahead and I was not sure if it was the truth, because in the rac...
KARIN THURIG I am very thankful that I have lived the life I have lived. I am thankful for my Graves' disease...
GAIL DEVERS I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only a...
MAYA ANGELOU I always imagined spending my senior year with my friends that I have been in school with for the la...
MALLORY COMEAUX I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believe...
DALAI LAMA I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believe...
DALAI LAMA With me, baseball will never grow old. In my own estimation, it may not have improved so much as man...
CHARLES COMISKEY It is horrible to say, but I was stigmatized by being a bridal designer for a long time. I am amazed...
VERA WANG my life is a performance for which i was never given any chance to rehearse. If i had then I may not...
FEMALE IMAGINATION I know we've been able to do things that have given them tickets to become very successful in life.
JAMES GEISLER My life had become a catastrophe. I had no idea how to turn it around. My band had broken up. I had ...
TREY ANASTASIO I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of bein...
HARRY MATHEWS I had to make a choice at one point in my life, of missing films or missing my children. It was a ve...
AUDREY HEPBURN In the early ages, I believe not much thought was given to what man is and what his real functions s...
MORARJI DESAI I am quite a romantic person, really, and I should have put that into my music earlier, but I was pr...
BILLY IDOL It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulses--affections--vice...
THOMAS HARDY To me, 2002 was so personal and emotional. I believe that you create your own destiny, but it was al...
TONY LA RUSSA In my early twenties, I had no idea who I was. And I think that's one reason you should try diff...
COBIE SMULDERS To whom much is given, much is expected. I do believe this. It's embedded in me.
TIM COOK If that's not the case, I have my degree in secondary education so who knows what is going to be ahe...
BRIAN MCBRIDE It was a big loss to me because, for one, I was trying to do something nobody had ever done before. ...
XAVIER CARTER So she told me a story. A story about a boy who was born with very green eyes, and the man who was s...
TAHEREH MAFI I think everybody has their pain. For me, the time that I really had to grow up was when I was 15 an...
LINDSEY HAUN The virtue of seeing a doctor who knows you is, if you come in and say, 'I have a headache,' he or s...
CAROLYN CLANCY Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you that I have too strong a feeling for Fr...
GEORGE ELIOT That's just a real-life condition I have to deal with. It has nothing to do with me doing the movie....
ANG LEE If I had many who oppose me, it means I have stood for something sacred that only my heart knows.
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA Growing up as a young kid, I was in a restaurant. So, you know, I always had a very good understandi...
GRANT ACHATZ On the one hand I follow a vocation because I have an ability that I should exercise, but I want to ...
WOLFGANG TILLMANS I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo-Saxons such tremendous power that Europe will be...
WERNER HEISENBERG I don't think, Trotwood,' returned Agnes, raising her soft eyes to mine, 'I would consider that. Per...
CHARLES DICKENS One of the skills I had to learn and become proficient in is kissing a man. I had never kissed a man...
DWAYNE JOHNSON I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. ...
JEANETTE WINTERSON I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that's fine....
TAYLOR SWIFT "I have said to my well-wishers, 'Thank you for the trouble that you are taking with me, but I am to...
OSHO As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is...
ERNST FISCHER So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it...
DAMIEN HIRST I thought if I could share just one secret that I thought was little enough to me. Because it was so...
DONNA SCHILLINGER I believe that one key to success is to accept truth, no matter how it's spoken.
ROBERT KIYOSAKI If you believe, as I do believe, in reincarnation, they say that every time you come back, it's ...
MARIE HELVIN So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad...
DAMIEN HIRST And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it m...
RAINER MARIA RILKE As to the 'St. Michael,' the subject is very fine, but very difficult, so I doubt that I sha...
PETER PAUL RUBENS In my own relationships, I know that I should break up with someone who doesn't encourage me to ...
VERONICA ROTH Who knows what would have become of me, if my parents had not had their influence on me.
OTTO SCHILY I should have felt proud, but instead I felt awful. That I had let him down so many times, that I ha...
DAVID LEVITHAN One of the things that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people's expectations. You...
TIGER WOODS He was just bunting the serve back, waiting for a short ball to pounce on and I got the perfect repl...
LLEYTON HEWITT I did it because he wasn't fair to you. Because you deserve credit for what you've done. Because he ...
RICHELLE MEAD Perfect wife is the one who knows that no man is perfect.
VIKRANT PARSAI If my twelve-year-old self, of whom I had grown rather fond, thinking about him, were to reproach me...
L.P. HARTLEY I would only have been too pleased if someone had asked me for my data. If you really believed in yo...
JAMES LOVELOCK One thing I do believe is I'm a believer in the presence of God. I believe that God is close. Wh...
DAVID GREGORY It was a very hard life. As I got older, the family was depending very much on me. My two older brot...
MARTIN LEL When I'm in management meetings when we're deciding my future, those decisions are left up t...
TAYLOR SWIFT Any relationship should have love, and if there is no love, it is better to call off a relationship....
BIPASHA BASU I found myself thinking that perhaps there was something inexorable about the way events unfolded, a...
HANYA YANAGIHARA If I went by all the rejection I've had in my career, I should have given up a long time ago.
MIKE MYERS I'm very much over my hair. If it was up to me I'd have cut it a long time ago.
SAMUEL LARSEN You're the only one who can bring me through this, because I've never trusted someone the way I trus...
MEREDITH WILD I had to learn to dismiss people who would criticize me based on nothing, but I also had to learn no...
JUSTIN TRUDEAU I do adore food. If I have any vice it's eating. If I was told I could only eat one food for the...
COLIN BAKER There was a point in my life where ignorance ruled me. As I grew and learned, eventually my consciou...
MICHAEL ANTHONY JIMENEZ

More 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 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 I am prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an ext...
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 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 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