Top 74 Quotes by Italo Calvino

I would very much like to be one of those writers who have something really clear in their head to say, and throughout their life they promote this idea in their works.

Bringing a child into the world makes sense only if this child is wanted consciously and freely by its two parents. If it is not, then it is simply animal and criminal behavior.

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

When I'm writing a book, I prefer not to speak about it, because only when the book is finished can I try to understand what I've really done and to compare my intentions with the result.

I'm a regular guy; I like well-defined outlines. I'm old-fashioned, bourgeois.

I was born in Cuba, and my parents were tropical agronomists.

If the reader looks, I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories.

The writer is someone who tears himself to pieces in order to liberate his neighbor.

I have never loved any writer as much as Hemingway.

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