If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.
Italo CalvinoThe lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest-for example, the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both-must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story.
Italo CalvinoThe universe is the mirror in which we can contemplate only what we have learned to know in ourselves
Italo CalvinoThere is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to countโleaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries
Italo Calvino