“And this definition is something you may then carry with you for the rest of your life, trying to confirm it or extend or correct or deny it; but you can never eliminate it.”

— Italo Calvino, The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1947), Preface; tr. Archibald Colquhoun (1957)

About Italo Calvino

1923 – 1985

Italian novelist, author of "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler".

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

“Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined.”

“It is true that software cannot exercise its powers of lightness except through the weight of hardware.”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations.”

“We live in a country where the people own the Government and not in a country where the Government owns the people.”

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

“There is nothing to life that has value, except the degree of power—assuming that life itself is the will to power.”