It is only after you have come to know the surface of things ... that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible.
Italo Calvinoseek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space
Italo CalvinoIf a lover is wretched who invokes kisses of which he knows not the flavor, a thousand times more wretched is he who has had a taste of the flavor and then had it denied him.
Italo CalvinoWork stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.
Italo CalvinoYour house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they area dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.
Italo Calvino