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A quarter of America is a dramatic, tense, violent country, exploding with contradictions, full of brutal, physiological vitality, and that is the America that I have really loved and love. But a good half of it is a country of boredom, emptiness, monotony, brainless production, and brainless consumption, and this is the American inferno.


Italo Calvino

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Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your he...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER You're still lovely," Mor said a bit gently.
Elain offered a half smile. "I suppose that war m...
SARAH J. MAAS I wish I was home", She said miserably.
She tried so hard to be brave,
to be fierce as a...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN The issue isn't whether he loved you, it's how much. Too much. Love can be poison
SARAH J. MAAS I am broken and healing, but every piece of my heart belong to you.
SARAH J. MAAS He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain...
SARAH J. MAAS Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold ...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Hodor," said Hodor.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN You do what you love, what you need
SARAH J. MAAS I turned.
Rhysand leaned against the archway into the sitting room, arms crossed, wings nowhere...
SARAH J. MAAS Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI To stand on the
brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli...
ASK AND IT IS GIVEN His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha...
TEKOA MANNING She made a fence of phrases, which seemed a treachery to herself.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR You are the blood of the dragon. You can make a hat.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Be grateful for every moment and every breath.
TERESA COLLINS All of life is a foreign country.
JACK KEROUAC Because death is the only thing that could have ever kept him from you.
ALLY CARTER I want to share this bed with you, though," I breathed. "I want you to hold me."
Stars flicker...
SARAH J. MAAS Each man lives in his own universe and when he dies the world is over
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Life is a re-discovery.
BRIAN BLESSED If you think that life is a celebration full of party poppers and merry go rounds it's not it's a ga...
GARY F EVANS... Life Is a Misconception.
DEYTH BANGER Life is a desire!
DEYTH BANGER To trust someone you must firstly remember that it is a two way street that will go all the way if y...
GARY F EVANS... That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Kn...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Many atrocities, have been done in the name of the greater good.
SARAH J. MAAS Mother Superior jump the gun...
-The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun
LAUREN MYRACLE (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing ...
JOHN MUIR You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal.
I was a survivor, and I was strong.
I would no...
SARAH J. MAAS I sipped from my wine. "And if he had grabbed me?"

There was nothing but uncompromising w...
SARAH J. MAAS There you are. I've been looking for you.

His first words to me— not a lie at a...
SARAH J. MAAS I was not prey any longer, I decided as I eased up to that door.
And I was not a mouse.
I ...
SARAH J. MAAS No one was my master— but I might be master of everything, if I wished. If I dared.
SARAH J. MAAS He drained his glass. "I made a mistake."
"It's not the end of the world if you do that every n...
SARAH J. MAAS I will kill anyone who harms you," Rhys snarled. "I will kill them, and take a damn long time doing ...
SARAH J. MAAS Julia poured tea gracefully, but it all ran over into the saucers.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR The next day, the villages came closer together until the beginnings and endings could no longer be ...
PATRICK W. CARR It appeared to Harriet that she was always the one who remembered having seen other people. They nev...
ELIZABETH TAYLOR Would you like me to grovel with gratitude for bringing me here, High Lord?"
"Ah. The Suriel to...
SARAH J. MAAS I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix.
DEYTH BANGER I love you every day. And now I will miss you every day.
MITCH ALBOM We die a day at a time
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Absoballylutely top hole, wot. A and B the C of D I'd say. . . Above and Beyond the Call of Duty.
BRIAN JACQUES I realized that day that blessings come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes.
CRAIG GROESCHEL For me, my life is a journey.
JAY ELECTRONICA Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Quick as a snake. Calm as still wa...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN You know nothing, Jon Snow.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN I wanted to tell you that I just--I miss you. And maybe that sounds ridiculous--like we barely know ...
TAMMARA WEBBER Love isn't the work of the tender and the gentle;
Love is the work of wrestlers.
The one w...
JALALUDDIN MEVLANA RUMI The opportunity to decieve others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception...
SAM HARRIS Life is a risk.
CARMELO ANTHONY Trump’s America is not America: not today’s or tomorrow’s, but yesterday’s.

Trump...
CHARLES M. BLOW Kehidupan perempuan itu sembilan bagian kacau dan satu bagian ajaib, kau akan segera mengetahuinya.....
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Jaime smiled knowingly. Men will read all sorts of things into a knowing smile if you let them.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people you...
FREDRIK BACKMAN Closed eyes, heart not beating, but a living love.
AVIS COREA This garden is your life. Of course, there are the occasional weeds—but more than anything, this g...
SETH ADAM SMITH The books brought brilliance to my life, and they brought an understanding: Life is a story. Everyth...
RENE DENFELD This is the Modern Man, who cannot save himself but wants to save the world.
He is the Wise who...
CRISTIANE SERRUYA A servant who serves excellently from his whole heart with due courage and humility is never a serva...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
PAT CONROY Life is a journey. When we stop, things don't go right.
POPE FRANCIS Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complime...
STEPHEN FRY To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys."
Rhys clinked his glass against mine. “To...
SARAH J. MAAS Males are horrible creatures, aren’t they?
SARAH J. MAAS When you spend so long trapped in darkness, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.
SARAH J. MAAS Aemon’s blind white eyes came open. “Egg?” he said, as the rain streamed down his cheeks. “E...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN But I forgot to tell him,” I said quietly, opening the door, “that the villain is usually the pe...
SARAH J. MAAS I frowned at the eye in my palm. "What, literally shout at the tattoo?"
"You could try rubbing ...
SARAH J. MAAS They say that a part of you dies when a special Loved One passes away...I disagree...I say a part of...
DANIEL YANEZ Think of a new day and think of a new purpose. Think of a new reason out of the reasons of yesterday...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going t...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY We Are All Infinite
STEPHEN CHBOSKY You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY That one moment when you know you are not a sad story. You are ALIVE.
STEPHAN CHBOSKY Somos quienes somos por un montón de razones.Quizás nunca conozcamos la mayoría de ellas.Pero aun...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Ambos dijeron que tomara asiento y parecían hablar en serio, así que me senté.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all beco...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybewe'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY There's nothing like the deep breathes after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore st...
STHEPHEN CHBOSKY no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I don't know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Dreams, just dreams, it's all illusion
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Though we are terrorized by death, it's not different from birth, it just happens
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA He wept because he was afraid now that he could not save Gabriel. He no longer cared about himself
LOIS LOWRY A great future starts with what you can see
SOTONYE ANGA A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in ...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

More Italo Calvino

An exotic birthplace on its own is not informative of anything.
ITALO CALVINO His trees were now hung all over with scrawled pieces of paper and bits of cardboard with maxims fro...
ITALO CALVINO Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.
ITALO CALVINO The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines.
ITALO CALVINO What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the r...
ITALO CALVINO It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
ITALO CALVINO Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because...
ITALO CALVINO I am prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an ext...
ITALO CALVINO The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted ...
ITALO CALVINO Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has,...
ITALO CALVINO Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and...
ITALO CALVINO The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.
ITALO CALVINO The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to...
ITALO CALVINO The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretch...
ITALO CALVINO When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sig...
ITALO CALVINO A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
ITALO CALVINO A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but...
ITALO CALVINO Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most ...
ITALO CALVINO Nature in America does not arouse powerful emotions in me.
ITALO CALVINO What is modern art but the attempt to pinpoint vague, incorporeal, inexpressible sensations? What is...
ITALO CALVINO Revolutionaries are more formalistic than conservatives.
ITALO CALVINO I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hend...
ITALO CALVINO The city of Leonia refashions itself every day: every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, ...
ITALO CALVINO Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness
ITALO CALVINO Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because...
ITALO CALVINO Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places e...
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.
ITALO CALVINO In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision.
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO One writes fables in periods of oppression.
ITALO CALVINO Of course, I'm of the generation that grew up with Hemingway and Faulkner as strong influences.
ITALO CALVINO Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy.
ITALO CALVINO It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear
ITALO CALVINO Viaggi per rivivere il tuo passato? — era a questo punto la domanda del Kan, che poteva anche esse...
ITALO CALVINO Every time I've had to do journalistic investigations, I've cursed, but later I discovered t...
ITALO CALVINO In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Follo...
ITALO CALVINO Sections in the bookstore

- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You Needn't Read
- B...
ITALO CALVINO To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept ...
ITALO CALVINO Rarely does an interviewer ask questions you did not expect. I have given a lot of interviews, and I...
ITALO CALVINO How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy...
ITALO CALVINO Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.
ITALO CALVINO Mas a desgraça é que foi levado à loucura por Eros, deus pagão, que quanto mais reprimido, mais ...
ITALO CALVINO Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write l...
ITALO CALVINO The only contact we could have with the void was through this little the void had produced as quinte...
ITALO CALVINO Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpec...
ITALO CALVINO If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a...
ITALO CALVINO What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the r...
ITALO CALVINO You are at the wheel of your car, waiting at a traffic light, you take the book out of the bag, rip ...
ITALO CALVINO Ya en el escaparate de la librería localizaste la portada con el título que buscabas. Siguiendo es...
ITALO CALVINO Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could end...
ITALO CALVINO Don't you ever get tired of reading?" she asked. "You could hardly be called good company! Don't you...
ITALO CALVINO In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Follo...
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompa...
ITALO CALVINO I'm a regular guy; I like well-defined outlines. I'm old-fashioned, bourgeois.
ITALO CALVINO The public figure of the writer, the writer-character, the 'personality-cult' of the author,...
ITALO CALVINO The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand
ITALO CALVINO Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.
ITALO CALVINO ...the world was trying to change its old face and show its underbelly of earth and roots.
ITALO CALVINO Amusement has always been the great moving force behind culture.
ITALO CALVINO E combattendo, troveranno che le parole non hanno più significato.
ITALO CALVINO The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never h...
ITALO CALVINO It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the nig...
ITALO CALVINO If all material were transparent—the ground that supports us, the envelope that sheathes our body�...
ITALO CALVINO Tu casa, al ser el lugar donde lees, puede decirnos cuál es el lugar que los libros tienen en tu vi...
ITALO CALVINO Although I am small, ugly and dirty, I am highly ambitious, and at the slightest flattery, I immedia...
ITALO CALVINO My mother delayed my enrollment in the Fascist scouts, the Balilla, as long as possible, fi...
ITALO CALVINO A los duelos suceden tarde o temprano acontecimientos alegres, es ley de vida.
ITALO CALVINO No puede haber amor si no se es uno mismo con todas sus fuerzas.
ITALO CALVINO - Quando sarai stanco di star lì cambierai idea! - gli gridò.
- Non cambierò mai idea, - fec...
ITALO CALVINO hasta que murió, sin haber comprendido, tras una vida entera dedicada a la fe, en qué creía, pero...
ITALO CALVINO Yo tenía la impresión de que mi hermano no sólo había enloquecido del todo, sino que se estaba v...
ITALO CALVINO کوزیمو طرحی نوشته و منتشر کرده بود که این نام را داشت: "پ...
ITALO CALVINO Nuestro padre se asomó al antepecho.
- ¡Cuando te canses de estar ahí ya cambiarás de idea!...
ITALO CALVINO A gentleman, my Lord Father, is such whether he is on earth or on the treetops
ITALO CALVINO As a matter of fact, we had already been warned against sliding down the marble banisters, not out o...
ITALO CALVINO Cosimo stretched out his arms. 'I came up here before you, my lords, and here I will stay afterwards...
ITALO CALVINO It was on the fifteenth of June, 1767, that Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, my brother, sat among us for ...
ITALO CALVINO That mesh of leaves and twigs of fork and froth, minute and endless, with the sky glimpsed only in s...
ITALO CALVINO Cosimo did not yet know love, and what is any experience without that? What point is there in riskin...
ITALO CALVINO Now that he is no longer here I should be interested in so many things: philosophy, politics, histor...
ITALO CALVINO We live in a country where causes are always seen but never effects.
ITALO CALVINO In the Ondariva gardens the branches spread out like the tentacles of extraordinary animals, and the...
ITALO CALVINO Le imprese più ardite vanno vissute con l'animo più semplice. (Cosimo Piovasco Barone di Rondò)
ITALO CALVINO Her breast was young, the nipples rosy. Cosimo just grazed it with his lips, before Viola slid away ...
ITALO CALVINO ...his life was dominating by conflicting ideas, as often happens in periods of transition. The turb...
ITALO CALVINO Il bassotto alzò il muso verso di lui, con lo sguardo dei cani quando non capiscono e non sanno che...
ITALO CALVINO We'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses.
ITALO CALVINO The more time passed, the less happened. The more they felt something must happen, the more the bail...
ITALO CALVINO And she knew him and so herself, for although she had always known herself she had never been able t...
ITALO CALVINO Ombrosa non c’è più. Guardando il cielo sgombro, mi domando se è davvero esistita. Quel frastag...
ITALO CALVINO There is the moment when the silence of the countryside gathers in the ear and breaks into a myriad ...
ITALO CALVINO That wish to enter into an elusive element which had urged Cosimo into the trees, was still working ...
ITALO CALVINO Why d’you make me suffer?"
“Because I love you.”
Now it was his turn to get angry. �...
ITALO CALVINO Si conobbero. Lui conobbe lei e se stesso, perché in verità non s'era mai saputo. E lei conobbe lu...
ITALO CALVINO So began their love, the boy happy and amazed, she happy and not surprised at all (nothing happens b...
ITALO CALVINO Myśli te zaprawione były pewną goryczą ludzi starych, którzy więcej cierpią nad utratą rzecz...
ITALO CALVINO Something must always remain that eludes us ... For power to have an object on which it can be exerc...
ITALO CALVINO again I am torn between the necessity and the impossibility of answering.
ITALO CALVINO A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "H...
ITALO CALVINO Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great ...
ITALO CALVINO Resta-nos esclarecer a parte que nesse golfo fantástico cabe ao imaginário indireto, ou seja, o co...
ITALO CALVINO La mia ricerca dell’esattezza si biforca in due direzioni. Da una parte la riduzione degli avvenim...
ITALO CALVINO Penso che siamo sempre alla caccia di qualcosa di nascosto o di solo potenziale o ipotetico, di cui ...
ITALO CALVINO Journeys to relive your past?' was the Khan's question at this point, a question which could also ha...
ITALO CALVINO After a seven days' march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city ...
ITALO CALVINO what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a pa...
ITALO CALVINO God knows wherebthey are now, the people I receive instructions, or rather-let's come right out and ...
ITALO CALVINO ...eyes that, like those of children, look at an eternal present without forgiveness.
ITALO CALVINO Today each of you is the object of the other’s reading, one reads in the other the unwritten story...
ITALO CALVINO In Chloe, a great city, the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter...
ITALO CALVINO There is still one of which you never speak.'

Marco Polo bowed his head.

'Veni...
ITALO CALVINO With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpecte...
ITALO CALVINO You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question ...
ITALO CALVINO Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret,...
ITALO CALVINO I write by hand, making many, many corrections. I would say I cross out more than I write. I have to...
ITALO CALVINO If I were to draw, I would apply myself only to studying the form of inanimate objects," I said some...
ITALO CALVINO ...an archer, the moment he thinks he's experienced, is lost; every lion we encounter in our brief l...
ITALO CALVINO The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here...
ITALO CALVINO The naked man had lost hope now; he would never be able to return to the earth's surface;he would ne...
ITALO CALVINO Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I i...
ITALO SVEVO You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.
ITALO SVEVO God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.
ITALO SVEVO There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and... the third I can't remember
ITALO SVEVO The problem is that remittances [from the U.S.] have made Salvadorans comfortable and they don't wan...
ITALO ESCRICH The problem is that remittances [from the United States] have made Salvadorans comfortable, and they...
ITALO ESCRICH