The universe is the mirror in which we can contemplate only what we have learned to know in ourselves
Italo CalvinoIt's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.
Italo CalvinoIt is only through the confining act of writing that the immensity of the nonwritten becomes legible
Italo CalvinoMemory really matters...only if it binds together the imprint of the past and the project of the future, if it enables us to act without forgetting what we wanted to do, to become without ceasing to be, and to be without ceasing to become.
Italo Calvinowhat he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveller's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveller 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