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Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one's mother's womb.


Italo Calvino

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I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jo...
ALAN LIGHTMAN The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a langua...
RICHARD RORTY As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is every...
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: w...
J.K. ROWLING We embrace the idea -- advanced by both ancient philosophers and modern physicists -- that the world...
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON This world and everything in it is only temporary; eternity is out there, we swim in it. And within ...
C. JOYBELL C. The only thing more final than Death is Yesterday. You can not bring it back, nor can you change it.
GEORGE REX That's environment. But that's not the only environment. There's also the environment that happens t...
MICHAEL BAILEY The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in o...
RAINER MARIA RILKE If the government will not change its position, we note that there are a lot more of us and our troo...
BRUNO JULLIARD You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones...
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Of all the riches that we hug, of all the pleasures we enjoy, we can carry no more out of this world...
JOHN S. BONNELL The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR. We start our lives with blues . . . with music. It's our first language. It's the rhythm of the womb...
DAVID MUTTI CLARK Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, ...
MARQUIS DE SADE Swimsuit competitions go against everything that is right and decent in this world. We're told that ...
FIROOZEH DUMAS Love is like a circle, a circle big and round. An individual can draw a circle around him or her and...
C. LIDE SANGTAM The fact that we lost one match does not mean we have to change everything. We must carry on. Result...
GREGORY COUPET I write about the scariest monsters: The ones inside us all. And the ones that want to eat what is i...
AARON MARCUSSON It's strange. How hollow i feel. Like there might be echoes inside of me. Like I'm one of those choc...
TAHEREH MAFI We come into the world through a man and a woman. But life blessings us with many fathers and mother...
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already...
J.K. ROWLING Every single one of us is a champion. We competed among millions in a massive swimming competition i...
YAMIN RASHEED The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.
JOHN MCAFEE There's more to clothing than just adornment. It does more than merely change how the world perceive...
JACQUELINE CAREY We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves alre...
J.K. ROWLING We're saying that they are more like a private board than one under exclusive control of the state.
DANA CODY There is always a brave new world,” said Poirot, “but only, you know, for very special people. T...
AGATHA CHRISTIE Here's to real heroes, not the ones who carry us off into the sunset but the ones who help us choose...
E.M. TIPPETTS You did everything you could, but sometimes all the love in the world from mothers and brothers isn'...
COLLEEN HOOVER I'm not going to change the world. You're not going to change the world. But we can help - w...
CRISTIANO RONALDO Like Adam, we have all lost Paradise; and yet we carry Paradise around inside of us in the form of a...
FREDERICK BUECHNER The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have.
CRAIG GROESCHEL My dad is still Christian Scientist. My mom's not, and I'm not. But I believe in God, and th...
ELLEN DEGENERES Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.
PENELOPE LIVELY Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.
FRANCOIS DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms
PENELOPE LIVELY Milan has more experience than us and that's important. It's also true that they have won more title...
CARLES PUYOL Theoretically, I can imagine that someday we will regard or children not add creatures to manipulate...
ALICE MILLER We just take each game like it's a provincial final - not a club game - but like a provincial final....
EVE BELISLE Life is painful, and we carry with us so much disappointment and heartbreak. But I’m fighting to s...
SHAUNA NIEQUIST The demand for Final Four tickets soared when this event went corporate, ... Corporate interests are...
DAVID LORD We can't change the world except insofar as we change the way we look at the world - and, in fac...
PICO IYER Show us that sport unites by overcoming national, political, religious and language barriers. You ca...
JACQUES ROGGE To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things. Global betterment...
SUZY KASSEM We may not understand the pathways God lays out before us. We may not even like walking the journey....
MARY E. DEMUTH The girls worked hard. We ran our offense really well and had good shots, but the ones in the final ...
BOB ATKINSON Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my moth...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.
LIAM CALLANAN They help us remove non-working dollars and re-deploy them, so we can spend more on actual marketing...
TERRY ATKINS We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But insid...
ANTHONY MARRA Art is not supposed to change the world, to change practical things, but to change perceptions. Art ...
JR You can't tell how heavy somebody else's load is just from looking. The Lord doesn't give us more th...
LALITA TADEMY Everybody wants to change the world. But I guess how we want to change it is a little bit more quiet...
MARGO TIMMINS You want to set me free? Do it. You want to turn me in? You can do that too. You're the only one wit...
GREER MACALLISTER ...A brave new world. There isn't anything really like that, is there?"
"You don't believe in i...
AGATHA CHRISTIE I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ... not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.
FREDRIK BACKMAN In reality the world is as full of bad mothers as it is of bad fathers, and it is not the motherless...
LOUIS DE BERNIERES One of the boys' mothers helped with the [claymation] class, and that got him more interested in the...
SANDY WILSON Dogs have such short life spans, it's like a concentrated version of a human life. When they get...
CAROLINE KNAPP Marriage should never be the final destination,but a predestination that can convey us to the final ...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overh...
HAROLD BLOOM The bank inside our world is greater than the physical banks we have around us.
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) WE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD, BUT WE MUST FIRST CHANGE OURSELVES.
JOB LAZARUS OKELLO. Defense is key this year, Coach D told us that from the very first meeting we had. Everybody is focu...
JANELL BURSE Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I ca...
W.B. YEATS We walked out of the gate looking like we were the ones in the mud and they were a lot quicker than ...
MAURICE CHEEKS History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something... History gives us the ...
TIMOTHY SNYDER We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already...
J. K. ROWLING Beware of no man more than yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.
C. H. (CHARLES HADDON) SPURGEON Beware of no man more than yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.
G. K. CHESTERTON Everyone is not able, or inclined, to write poetry in the narrower sense any more than everyone is q...
LOUIS MACNEICE The joy is that we can take back our bodies, reclaim our health, and restore ourselves to balance. W...
JOHN ROBBINS We have a lot of mothers and daughters that come, but every year, we have more men because we're not...
CARRIE EDGAR I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day ...
EMILY DICKINSON Always, the eye sees more than the mind can comprehend, and we go through life self-blinded to much ...
DEAN KOONTZ We can't change the world, but we can change its people. But if the people is the world,technically ...
RISHNIEL I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write...
LAURA LINNEY I really hope not. Now it's going to have more of a Final Four atmosphere. Maybe we can gear it towa...
KATHY LANTER The law is not the private property of lawyers, nor is justice the exclusive province of judges and ...
JIMMY CARTER Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and t...
ANGELINA JOLIE We can not change the world, because we simply do not want to change ourselves.
VICTOR WERNET When he gets inside, good things happen for us. And when we ask him to carry the load he does just t...
CHRIS KESTNER Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.
CHARLES SPURGEON Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.
CHARLES H. SPURGEON Everything worthwhile is a good idea, but did you ever notice there is more bad ideas that will work...
WILL ROGERS if we look forward to a future in which mankind behaves rationally and avoids self-destruction, we c...
ISAAC ASIMOV I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened fr...
MARILYN FERGUSON We're able not only to make an “event” on FaceBook where millions will push “like”.We're mor...
SVETLANA SHCHEDRINA | LUCKYOPTIMIST You may not be able to change the world, but you can always change somones world.
ETHAN GARV** For the 100 victims, and for all the ones that are burnt and scarred and everything else, they deser...
DIANE MATTERA I am glad that though someone did me grossly wrong my final mark on this world is not one of counter...
SHERRILYN KENYON A passion like that doesn’t come very often, but it can change the world with the right applicatio...
JONATHAN THERIAC I can't change you and you can't change me but we can work together and change the world.
GERMANY KENT Philosophy can change the way we perceive the world but science can change the way we live.
EPHDAN Prayer may not change our outer circumstances but inwardly it can change everything
RENAE A. SAUTER A New Year can bring wind of change along, but what kind of "wind" is that or what kind of "change" ...
MOSTAFA BAKOUSH The hippies had in mind something that they wanted, and were calling it "freedom," but in the final...
ROBERT PIRSIG

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 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 A quarter of America is a dramatic, tense, violent country, exploding with contradictions, full of b...
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