This is the paradox of the power of literature: it seems th… - Italo Calvino

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This is the paradox of the power of literature: it seems that only when it is persecuted does it show its true powers, challenging authority, whereas in our permissive society it feels that it is being used merely to create the occasional pleasing contrast to the general ballooning of verbiage.

Italo Calvino

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literature writing books power-of-the-written-word

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About Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 – September 19, 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. Lionized in Britain and America, he was, at the time of his death, the most-translated contemporary Italian writer.

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Alternative Names: Italo Giovanni Calvino • Italo Giovanni Calvino Mameli

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Umberto Eco Jorge Luis Borges Virginia Woolf Nadine Gordimer Ursula K. Le Guin

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When the olfactory alphabet, which made them so many words in a precious lexicon, is forgotten, perfumes will be left speechless, inarticulate, illegible.

بمقدورنا أن نمنع القراءة: لكن في المرسوم الذي يحظر القراءة سيبقى شيءٌ ما مقروءاً، من الحقيقة التي لا نريد لها أبداً أن تُقرأ

To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in a place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and when in which you vanished.

This is the paradox of the power of literature: it seems that only when it is persecuted does it show its true powers, challenging authority, whereas… - Italo Calvino

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