You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.

Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.

Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.

A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people.

This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these new facts bring with it consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it. . . .

Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?

Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.