Top 74 Quotes by Italo Calvino

One writes fables in periods of oppression.

An exotic birthplace on its own is not informative of anything.

Good literature can be created only with something that is different from literature.

I am more and more convinced that literature is made up of works, genres, schools, discussions, problems, collective work in order to solve certain problems.

Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write licking their finger.

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.

I think today that politics registers very late things which society manifests through other channels, and I feel that often politics distorts and mystifies reality.

Man is simply the best chance we know of that matter has had of providing itself with information about itself.

I don't believe chance can play a role in my literature.

The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines.