...the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which cou… - Italo Calvino
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...the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping...something runs among them, an exchange of glances like lines that connect one figure with another and draw arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene...
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.
Biography information from
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Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, The original uploader was Varie11 at Italian Wikipedia. (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Italo Giovanni Calvino
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Italo Giovanni Calvino Mameli
Portrait from Wikimedia Commons. Credit: The original uploader was Varie11 at Italian Wikipedia.. Used under Public domain / CC0. Processed and styled by Quotewise.
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"A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without reading it!" and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading."
The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.
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From mirror to mirror — this is what I happen to dream of — the totality of things, the whole, the entire universe, divine wisdom could concentrate their luminous rays into a single mirror. Or perhaps the knowledge of everything is buried in the soul, and a system of mirrors that would multiply my image would then reveal to me the soul of the universe, which is hidden in mine.
