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"The proper use of language, for me personally, is one that enables us to approach things (present or absent) with discretion, attention, and caution, with respect for what things (present or absent) communicate without words."
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"To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery."
"The themes Poe used were universal and timeless. As long as the English language exists at all, we will be able to appreciate what he did. It will not age! It will not become dated!"
"These examples of the lack of simplicity in English and French, all appearances to the contrary, could be multiplied almost without limit and apply to all national languages."
"In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary."
"Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies."
"But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice."
Explore more quotes by Italo Calvino
"In fact the problem Leopardi is facing is speculative and metaphysical, a problem in the history of philosophy from Parmenides to Descartes and Kant: the relationship between the idea of infinity as absolute space and absolute time, and our empirical knowledge of space and time."
"Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?"
"It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books."
"If one starts to draw comparisons between what is and what is not, it is the poorer qualities of the former that strike you, the impurities, the flaws; in short, you can only really feel safe with nothingness."
"Reading,' he says, 'is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid material object, which cannot be changed, and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined, or because it was once and is no longer, past, lost, unattainable, in the land of the dead....''Or that is not present because it does not yet exist, something desire, feared, possible or impossible,' Ludmilla says. 'Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be...."
"The seventh reader interrupts you: 'Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could only end in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and heroine married, or else they died. The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.'You stop for a moment to reflect on these words. Then, in a flash, you decide you want to marry Ludmilla."
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