Calvino Quotes

The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins. - Italo Calvino

Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top. - Italo Calvino

Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because there are as yet no words to enable us to get there. Myth is nourished by silence as well as by words. - Italo Calvino

Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness. - Italo Calvino

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear. - Italo Calvino

In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision. - Italo Calvino

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. - Italo Calvino

Calvino was not a writer of hits; he was a writer of classics. - William Weaver

Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has, and to declare them openly is rather like facing a psychoanalyst. - Italo Calvino