FastSaying

You are at the wheel of your car, waiting at a traffic light, you take the book out of the bag, rip off the transparent wrapping, start reading the first lines. A storm of honking breaks over you....


Italo Calvino

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

You deserve to be with somebody, who knows you're the one, from that very first moment he lays eyes ...
C. JOYBELL C. I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than...
NEIL GAIMAN You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES Beauty is the light within. Only when you see the light within yourself will others see it in you.
F. JOHNSON Hail to you gods, on that day of the great reckoning. Behold me, I have come to you, without sin, wi...
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD We begin to fight. The wind and I. Horns locked. Battling each other with elements.
LAURA DOCKRILL I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON 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 (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON 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 Nothing is never nothing. It's always something.
CECELIA AHERN Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the...
FERNANDO PESSOA She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word.
DIANA WYNNE JONES The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being a...
NEIL GAIMAN What is the Other?" they ask.
The Other is the one who taught me whatI should be like, but not ...
PAULO COELHO A tiny little baby!' says Tam. 'People look at me like I'm an animal. People who don't know me judge...
JON RONSON I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think eve...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY The way to final freedom is within thy self.
THE BOOK OF THE GOLDEN PRECEPTS We can leave a place behind, or we can stay in that place and leave our selfishness (often expressed...
JOHN H. GROBERG Look, my friends!' he called. 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven princeling in! If it wer...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN A book can become your best companion in times of crisis.
Not only do you learn in the journey ...
LIZ HAY It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have to be seen to be believed.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughou...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss, ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in th...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something e...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts an...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Grief is the price we pay for love.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a nobl...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Chr...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together. But for others, service will come first.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses w...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your s...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are g...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the man...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II These wretched babies don't come until they are ready.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and o...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II don’t say you’se ole. You’se uh lil girl baby all de time. God made it so you spent yo’ ole ...
ZORA NEALE HURSTON Things change, friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Here was one with an air of high nobility such as Aragorn at times revealed, less high perhaps, yet ...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN He had what he called just a small ration of tools:
A painted book.
A handful of pencils.<...
MARKUS ZUSAK He said it was the kind of book you made your own.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in t...
THE WORK OF THE CHARIOT We'll sort of get over the marriage first and then maybe look at the kids. But obviously we want...
PRINCE WILLIAM Family is the most important thing in the world.
PRINCESS DIANA You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I ...
CATHERINE THE GREAT With the right help, children have a good chance of overcoming their issues while they are still you...
KATE MIDDLETON As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.
KING SOLOMON I don't mind a big fascinator. I think there is more scope for artwork in a fascinator rather th...
ZARA PHILLIPS I was always told from the hat-makers that you should have your hair up because it shows the hat mor...
ZARA PHILLIPS I don't think I'll still be riding at 40. There are a couple of people who are still riding ...
ZARA PHILLIPS My dad's not a big talker.
ZARA PHILLIPS My dad can be pretty critical sometimes.
ZARA PHILLIPS I'd love to have kids, but not at the moment.
ZARA PHILLIPS You cannot make horses 'safe.'
ZARA PHILLIPS Virtually everything that gets printed about me is wrong anyway, so it doesn't really matter wha...
ZARA PHILLIPS It's stupid to say that I don't like being in the public eye, but I don't like doing stu...
ZARA PHILLIPS I'm an affectionate person.
ZARA PHILLIPS People still text me to say that there is something about me in the paper, and what really annoys me...
ZARA PHILLIPS Sometimes people will come up in the street and say: 'My daughter loves you, will you sign an au...
ZARA PHILLIPS Taking part in an Olympics on home ground is something you dream about.
ZARA PHILLIPS My brother and I have been able to get on and have been very lucky to do things with our family that...
ZARA PHILLIPS I don't think about the media.
ZARA PHILLIPS I love the sport and being competitive.
ZARA PHILLIPS The horses are all characters, all personalities. Some you get along with, some you don't, some ...
ZARA PHILLIPS I hate having my picture taken.
ZARA PHILLIPS Unfortunately in sport it's either good or bad. You've got to take the highs and the lows.
ZARA PHILLIPS My mother is massively into sailing, so we always had Musto clothes, and it went on from there, real...
ZARA PHILLIPS

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 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 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