Italo Calvino Quotes

Cuba, Journalist
October 15, 1923 – September, 19, 1985.

Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).

The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.

Italo Calvino
- Live
- Place
- Foreigner
Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.

Italo Calvino

You'll understand when you've forgotten what you understood before.

Italo Calvino
Knowledge of the world means dissolving the solidity of the world.

Italo Calvino
- World
- Knowledge
- Solidity
I will start out this evening with an assertion: fantasy is a place where it rains.

Italo Calvino
- Place
- Rain
- Fantasy
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.

Italo Calvino
- Love
- Human
- Will
It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

Italo Calvino
- Story
- Voice
- Ear
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

Italo Calvino
- Book
- Saying
- Classic

There is no language without deceit.

Italo Calvino
- Language
- Deceit
The universe is the mirror in which we can contemplate only what we have learned to know in ourselves.

Italo Calvino
- Know
- Universe
- Mirror
It is within you that the ghosts acquire voices.

Italo Calvino
- Ghost
- Voices
- Within