“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”

— Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (1972), p. 44; tr. William Weaver (1974)

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.”

“Where we find a difficulty we may always expect that a discovery awaits us. Where there is cover we hope for game.”

“A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.”

“He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.”

“Yet I argue not against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate one jot of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer right onward.”

“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”

“Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.”